Citation

Scheel-Sailer A, Felleiter P. Ther. Umsch. 2017; 74(2): 55-60.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Verlag Hans Huber)

DOI

10.1024/0040-5930/a000882

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Due to associated physiological and psychosocial changes, persons with a spinal cord injury have special needs during their acute care, their rehabilitation and their life long care. Consequently, a hospital specialized in the treatment of patients with spinal cord injuries faces specific challenges. Immediately after a spinal cord injury, during the adaptation process and in various stressful life situations, e. g. dependencies and chronic pain, a wise medical and ethical care is required. In the Swiss Paraplegic Centre an ethic forum was founded and established to offer structured support for these difficult situations. Support in ethically challenging topics as death and suicide, handling of "patients will" and communication in medical situations were elaborated. In parallel, key persons were educated to apply the method of ethical decision-making and to offer this procedure in case of ethical dilemmas throughout the institution. These measures helped mitigating emotionally challenging situations using transparent and structured ethical decision-making procedures. In this review article we present exemplarily selected political and legal backgrounds, care situations in persons with a spinal cord injury and institutional adaptations from an ethical point of view. © 2017 Hogrefe.

Language: de