The Policy of Hospice Palliative Care in Taiwan

The Policy of Hospice Palliative Care in Taiwan
 Rong-Chi Chen, MD, PhD, FANA
National Taiwan University School of Medicine,
En Chu Kong Hospital, Taipei Medical University
Buddhist Lotus Hospice Care Foundation
ABSTRACT
The purpose of medicine is to prevent illness, cure disease, relieve suffering and maintain health. The duty of the physicians, is to rescue life, cure disease, relieve suffering and 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 imminent, the duty of medical professionals will be to provide loving and humanistic care for the patient, to relieve pain and suffering and provide a peaceful and dignified demise. The physician takes care of his patient from birth to death, (i.e. 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. Provision of hospice palliative care and terminal DNR according to medical ethics and law can ensure peaceful dying of the patients. Provision of clinical chaplains in hospice care and promotion of community hospice care will improve the quality of terminal care. To use the  Taiwan Coma Scale can decrease the futile life sustaining treatment in the ICU.
WHOLE PAPER
Chen RC: Policy of hospice palliative care in Taiwan
http://bioaccent.org/palliative-medicine/palliative-medicine09.pdf  
BOAJ Pall Med
http://bioaccent.org/palliative-medicine/
Citation: Chen RC(2015) Policy of hospice palliative care in Taiwan. BAOJ Pall Medicine 2:009.