A - B |
C - O |
P - Z
Active
Euthanasia*
Administering a medicine in a large enough dose with the intent to
cause death and end suffering.
Active Involuntary
Euthanasia*
Administering a medicine with the intent to end a life without the
patient asking for it.
Active Voluntary Euthanasia*
Administering a medicine with the intent to end a life with the
patient asking for it.
Advance Care Plan
A legally binding document executed by an adult competent patient
with instructions about the person's choices for medical treatments
that apply when the person becomes unable to express their choices.
Advanced Dementia
The patient is generally awake and able to respond but is confused
as far as time, place, and names with impaired memory, vocabulary,
and ability to reason because of deterioration of brain function not
due to medication or a transient or reversible condition.
Assisted Suicide*
Assisting patient to take his or her own life by providing a
prescription or medicine in a dose sufficient to cause death.
Autonomy
The principle of autonomy gives to the adult competent individual
the right of self-determination and to have full control over
decisions related to invasion of the body.
Beneficence
The physician should be the patient's advocate under all
circumstances. The patient's well-being should be placed above the
physician's self-interest.
Central
Registry
A computer-based data bank in which the names and identification of
patients executing a Living Will is stored and can be readily
retrieved.
Coma Total
unawareness of self and environment with no periods of awakening;
could be deep with total lack of response or less deep when some
reflex response could be evoked with stimulation.
Competence To Make Medical
Treatment Decisions
Not necessarily equivalent to legal competence. It stipulates that
the patient is able to understand, evaluate, and choose a treatment.
CPR
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation by electric shock to the
heart and artificial ventilation with or without external chest
compressions. This is employed in the treatment of cessation of
heart or lung function.
DNR
Do-not-resuscitate order: indicates that for medical
reasons or a terminal condition CPR is inappropriate in the event of
cessation of the heartbeat or breathing.
DNAR
Do Not Attempt Resuscitation is a better term than DNR,
which may give the impression of abandoning the patient.
High Brain Death
Loss of high brain functions that define a person: decision
making, passions, and reason.
Informed Consent
The patient agrees to a certain medical intervention based on his or
her evaluation of all relevant information about the procedure,
alternatives, and the competence of the treating team.
Living Will
A legal document by which the patient states his or her preference
to forgo life-sustaining treatment during terminal illness or a
terminal state of unconsciousness.
Nonmaleficence
"First do no harm" is the first law in the practice of medicine.
Passive
Euthanasia*
To terminate artificial means of life support in order to allow the
natural process of death to take its course.
Paternalism
Forced decision-making without adequate information or consent from
the patient.
Patient Best-Interest
Standard
To apply treatment as judged to be in the patient's best interests
in accordance to competent medical standards and rational prevailing
societal sentiments.
Patient Self-Determination
Act
(Part of Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, PL 101-508, sections
4206, 4751)
A federal law, implemented in December 1991, that requires
institutions to notify patients about the availability of formal
advance directives.
Permanent Vegetative State
Irreversible vegetative state due to severe injury or acute oxygen
deprivation to progressive degenerative metabolic or developmental
brain disorder.
Persistent Vegetative State
A vegetative state that has persisted for a period of time (three
months when caused by disease and twelve months after head injury).
Proxy For Health-Care
Decisions
Many Living Will legislations allow for the appointment
of a proxy decision maker to make health-care decisions when the
patient is no longer competent to make them.
Shared Decision Making
An adult, competent individual has the ultimate right to
accept or refuse medical treatment even if that decision is deemed
irrational or harmful.
Subjective Standard
There is clear and convincing evidence that the medical decision to
be implemented is exactly what an incompetent or unconscious patient
would have chosen for himself/herself.
Substitute Judgment
Standard
To implement the recommendation of an appointed guardian or family
member as a substitute for the patient's own judgment.
Vegetative State
Unawareness of self and environment with sleep-wake
cycles and with either complete or partial preservation of
brain-stem autonomic functions.
Whole Brain Death
Disappearance of all brain functions including the
primitive autonomic functions of the brain stem. The brain produces
no spontaneous electric activity.
*These
actions are illegal and not advocated by Project GRACE.
