The Spirit of Humanism in Terminal Care: Taiwan Experience

ABSTRACT

The purpose of medicine is to prevent illness, to cure disease, to relieve suffering and to maintain health. The duty of the physicians, of course, is to rescue life, to cure disease, to relieve suffering and to promote health. However, “birth, aging, sickness and death” are unavoidable path of human life. When a person has reached the end of his life, when death is impending, the duty of medical professionals will be to provide love and humanistic care for the patient, to relieve pain and suffering and provide a peaceful and dignified demise. The caring domain of a physician is from birth to death, from “womb to tomb”. At the end of terminal care, physicians should maintain a religious and holistic spirit of “removal of suffering and provision of happiness” to their patients, as much as he could. Promotion of signing of DNR living will and training of Buddhist monastics as chaplains to serve in hospice care are emphasized.

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