Right to Life: Improvements in the Legislation of the Russian Federation Concerning Palliative Care

Alsu Machmutovna Khurmatullina,Olga Mikhailovna Smirnova,Rimma Rashitovna Amirova

doi:10.5539/jpl.v12n5p34

Abstract

This article raises the issues of organizing palliative care as one of the forms of implementing the right to life. The authors identify and describe the principles of palliative care. International law regulating palliative care is reviewed, along with a brief overview of the development of Russian law concerning palliative care and a list of patients who may be subject to palliative care. Special attention is given to the issue of decision-making by the patient&#39;s family. In connection with that, examples are cited for foreign models of communication between palliative care and decision science researchers, theorists, and clinicians, patients and their families for the purpose of exchanging information and studying the patients&#39; health issues, discussing treatment options and making coordinated decisions during the life-limiting illness of patients.  The results of this research are based on using the following methods: universal dialectical method of scientific cognition, as well as general scientific methods based on it (description, analysis, synthesis, induction, deduction, comparison, analogy, generalization) and specific scientific methods (comparative law method, systematic structural method and formal law method).

Highlights

This article raises the issues of organizing palliative care as one of the forms of implementing the right to life
In foreign practice, Shared decision-making (SDM) describes a model for health communication which encourages an egalitarian approach to decision making, recognizing the skills and experience offered by all participants involved in treatment decisions
It has been defined as a relationship among patients, family, and one or more health professionals where the participants clearly establish the decision that needs to be made, discuss the options, elicit patients' values and preferences associated with those options, and engage patients or their surrogates, to the extent desired, in making and implementing a decision

Summary

Introduction

This article raises the issues of organizing palliative care as one of the forms of implementing the right to life. Until the middle of the XX century, states did not realize how fundamental is the notion of the right to life It only became a focus of the international community after World War II. In Russia, the right to life was first proclaimed in the Declaration of Rights and Freedoms of Human and Citizen of 1991, and later written into the current Constitution of the Russian Federation. This category of utmost importance as the highest social value is a determining category for the entire Russian legal system. Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 7 of the Russian Constitution, Russia is proclaimed a social state where human health is protected by the state, and Article 41 establishes the constitutional right of each person and citizen for healthcare and medical help. «what is closely interrelated: they have one function, the maintenance and preservation of human health» Since the second half of the XX century, among the types of medical care, the medical community identifies palliative medical care, which is a type of palliative care

Results

Discussion

Conclusion