Conceptual Barriers to Palliative Care and Enlightenment From Chuang-tze’s Thoughts

This paper claims that palliative care (PC) is a suitable approach for offering comprehensive support to patients with life-threatening illness and unavoidable asthenia, to enhance their quality of life in aging and chronic illness. There are however some conceptual barriers to accessing that care o...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Liu, Junxiang (Author) ; Zhang, Tianyu (Author) ; Lian, Yiyao (Author) ; Li, Fei (Author) ; Ning, Xiaohong (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press 2020
In: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Year: 2020, Volume: 29, Issue: 3, Pages: 386-394
Further subjects:B ‘Tao’
B Life
B Death
B Palliative Care
B Conceptual barriers
B Chuang-tze
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Summary:This paper claims that palliative care (PC) is a suitable approach for offering comprehensive support to patients with life-threatening illness and unavoidable asthenia, to enhance their quality of life in aging and chronic illness. There are however some conceptual barriers to accessing that care on the Chinese Mainland: (1) Death-denying culture and society; (2) Misguidance and malpractice derived from the biomedical model; (3) Prejudice against PC and certain deviant understandings of filial piety culture. To counter these obstacles, the study introduces the philosophy of Chinese Taoist Chuang-tze to enlighten the public from ignorance and remove some illusions about death and dying; inspire people to face and accept illness and death calmly, and keep harmony and inner peace of mind to alleviate suffering, with the aim of providing wisdom and a shift of attitude toward life and death. Chuang-tze’s thoughts are consistent with the provision of palliative care, and to a certain degree, can promote its acceptability and delivery, and the conception of good death in practice.
ISSN:1469-2147
Contains:Enthalten in: Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0963180120000110