Terms and Definitions
Advance Directive
| Written legal documents by which a patient expresses his wishes concerning the kind of care he wants to receive in the event he becomes unable to make his own treatment decisions.
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Aid in Dying
| Aid in dying is an overarching term. Read what it means here. |
Autonomy
| A concept to describe the capacity of an individual to make independent choices.
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CPR
| CPR, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is a set of specific medical procedures designed to establish circulation and breathing in a patient who’s suffered an arrest of both. CPR is a supportive therapy, designed to maintain perfusion to vital organs while attempts are made to restore spontaneous breathing and cardiac rhythm.
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DNR
| DNR, do not resuscitate, is placed on a patient’s medical chart to indicate there should be no attempt to restart a failed heartbeat or restore breathing by any means such as by using CPR (see CPR), a ventilator, electrical stimulation, or use of medications for this purpose. A DNR order can be changed and experts say it should be reviewed regularly.
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Euthanasia
| Deliberate termination of life by someone else, on the explicit request of the person involved. ‘Voluntary’ euthanasia (VE) is a term to emphasize the voluntariness of the request for euthanasia. Some add the terms passive/active to make a distinction between palliative sedation (passive) and euthanasia (active) (see palliative sedation).
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Futility
| A term used in medical care to describe medical interventions that will have little effect on outcome or prognosis.
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Palliative sedation
| The practice of relieving distress in a terminally ill person in the last hours or days of a dying patient’s life. The objective is to control pain and discomfort, not to shorten the patient’s life.
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(Physician) Assisted suicide | Termination of life by person concerned (suicide), with the assistance of a physician (prescribing drugs).
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Prohibition of treatment
| A (written) statement advising health professionals that no exceptional measures should be used to attempt to save a person’s life.
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Right to Die | A basic conviction that end-of-life decisions should be an individual choice. |