Abstract
In September 1996, the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics convened a conference entitled "Comprehensive Care of the Terminally Ill: The Northern California Consensus Development Conference for Guidelines on Aid-in-Dying." The regionally based, multidisciplinary conference gathered people from a variety of disciplines and diverse perspectives on physician aid-in-dying. This report documents important points of convergence, disagreement, and uncertainty that emerged from the conference and provides commentary on crucial issues: the definition of terminal illness, ensuring adequate palliative care, psychiatric challenges, coping with family pressures, the doctor-patient relationship, the managed care context, the role of ethics committees, and institutional challenges. Should physician aid-in-dying become a legal practice in California, the report will provide guidance to health care organizations, health professionals, and public policy officials engaged in local or state guideline or policy development.
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Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
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