Reply to: Frailty and ethics at the end of life: The importance of a comprehensive assessment

Reply to: Frailty and ethics at the end of life: The importance of a comprehensive assessment
Journal of the American Geriatrics Society; by Colum Thomas MD, Eduardo Bruera MD, William Breitbart MD, Yesne Alici MD, Liz Blackler MBE, LCSW-R, Julia D. Kulikowski MD, Daniel P. Sulmasy MD, PhD; 6/5/24
The care of older persons at the end of life often involves competing concerns and highly value-sensitive decisions. In a recent article, we proposed a set of ethical rules—the canons of therapy—to help clinicians navigate complex cases involving older adults with delirium at the end of life. The canons of therapy most pertinent to such cases are restoration, means-end proportionality, discretion, and parsimony (see Table 1 for a description). These canons provide a structured toolset aligned with practical wisdom, which can serve as an ethical heuristic for guiding therapeutic judgments. ...