PALLIATIVE CARE AND EUTHANASIA – CONVERGENCE POINTS AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES

Abstract

The palliative care for patients focuses primarily on reducing suffering through all stages of the disease, regardless of its form and stage - acute, chronic (compensated and decompensated) or terminal. The palliative medicine is based on an interdisciplinary approach, including the active work of professionals from different fields - physicians, pharmacists, health care professionals, social workers, pedagogues, psychologists whose efforts are aimed at limiting physical, psycho-emotional and social deficits, accompanying mostly the advanced diseases. The palliative care is an integral part of the general health care and is aimed not only at a specific patient or condition, but also supports people and their families through the different stages of their lives. This implies a wide range of knowledge, skills, beliefs and attitudes to provide adequate and comprehensive care for all, especially in the presence of an advanced stage of illness with a focus on the quality of life, the onset of death and overcoming the grief of the loss of a close person. Many international documents on bioethics address the right to life as a human right and dignity, complementing this conclusion with the right to a dignified death. Thus, the euthanasia as a terminal approach and a means of resolving the problem of ending the life, began to penetrate into modern medicine under the influence of a number of factors - scientific, moral, legal, economic, religious, philosophical and social. This makes it more and more from a matter of death (which is inevitable for all organisms) in a managing of the process of dying and its associated unfavorable events such as fear, sorrow and loneliness. It is possible to offer a help in finalizing the life process, where the role of the patient can vary from very active to absolute passive. From the antiquity to the modern times in the different societies, there are different perceptions and attitudes about the occurrence of the death and its support. The proposed paper examines the main components of the palliative care, their organization, goals, methodologies and outcomes, offering an analysis of the awareness and the attitude of a modern Bulgarian population as well as the existing attitudes about the introduction and legalization of the euthanasia as a method of application in patients with terminal or untreated disease.