One of the most sensitive problems in the entire healthcare system is the end of a\a patient’s life. Unfortunately, every human being is not an elf from the Tolkien’s “Lord of The Rings”. We are not immortal. Naturally, sooner or later every one of us will appear on the death bed and this will be no longer the question of the proficiency and expertise of the physicians, it will be the matter of their ethics (Epstein, 2007).
A plenty of various articles, even books and Ph.D. dissertations have been written by the scholarly community on this subject of particular importance. Having referred to the recently published literature on this point, it became evident that almost every printed source (for instance The Politics of Difference in Medical Research written by Steven Epstein and published by the Chicago University in 2009) refers to the article called End of Life Care: An Ethical Review , published by the Center for Bioethics of University of Minnesota in 2009. This article is considered as one of the fundamental and informative sources on this subject as it is concise in its nature and effectively summarized the major points of the problem, accumulating the experience of both the physicians of the United States of America and their international colleagues. In order to find this article I used Google Scholar searching system. Naturally, some scholars vigorously propose not to use Google searching tools, because they often procure results of precarious credibility ( Beaucamp, Childress, 2007). However, I intentionally opted for this searching machine, because currently there is no available substantial proof that this system lacks scientific credibility. I inserted several key words to the searching machine (“End of life care ethics”, “ethics, end of life”, “medical ethics, patient’s death”, etc.). And the most popular result was the aforementioned publication of the University of Minnesota. I have decided on this very article because if it is reported to be the most popular paper by Google Scholar it signifies that this article is numerously cited in other scientific sources. When different key words were entered into the system, different articles and books appeared in the results section. However, only this article was indicated by the mechanism each time I commenced a new search.
However, I did pay attention to other articles too. But even the table of contents of the article in question happened to me the most informative and seemed to cover every aspect of the process of transition to another world, and the way it shall be treated by the medical workers. It is relevant for the medical practitioners due to the fact that it provides an informative insight into the common approaches that are ubiquitously used by the most qualified healthcare professionals around the world. Therefore, even the beginning doctors at the very outset of their careers may extensively recourse to the experience accumulated by the sophisticated professionals. It is useful for the …