Lewis M. Cohen, an American psychiatrist and specialist in palliative medicine and end-of-life issues from Massachusetts USA, uses the experiences of two skilled nurses providing professional terminal pain treatment, to explore what happens when decisions about end-of-life care shift from the hospital to the courtroom. The book describes in an easily readable way their situation and the byproduct of it: “quiet yet forceful ideological battles over proper medical procedures, over the nature of care and over how terminally ill patients should die” (flap text of the book). He also makes it clear that mixing up definitions of – mostly generally accepted – medical behaviour within the field of end-of life care is at the basis of many ideological, juridical and religious arguments, resulting in misunderstanding, bad (pain)treatment, and medical persistence for the terminal patients, and life time scaring experiences for professionals doing what they should do: helping a patient deal with pain, suffering and dying.
The book can be ordered via Harper Collins.