There are considerations both for and against allowing family members to decide whether to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from a terminal patient who is no longer able to communicate. On the one hand, a patient’s family members will often be the most suitable persons to speak for a patient’s values and interests and to make the best decision for the patient. On the other hand, family members may be influenced in their decision-making by a desire to rid themselves of the financial burden of the patient’s medical costs. Until now there has been a lack of in-depth research into the decision-making of family members caring for a terminally ill patient on life-sustaining treatment. This study investigates the suffering experienced by family members throughout the period of care, the changes in their relationships to the patient and/or other family members, and their attitudes toward the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment by conducting in-depth interviews with six family members who have given primary care to a patient in the final stages of cancer. The study participants report their emotional suffering as a result of the patient’s condition, the substantial changes in their lives after the patient has been diagnosed with cancer, and the conflicts with the patient or other family members that have arisen in the process of caring for the patient. By analyzing the statements of these participants, this study suggests that in the discussions of life-sustaining treatment family members should be considered as multi-faceted individuals who sacrifice themselves in order to care for the patient while trying to maintain family bonds as well as fulfilling their own emotional, physical, economic, and relational needs.

No abstract

Considering the recent medicalization of death, the importance of preparing both laypersons and medical students to have meaningful end-of-life conversations, which is among the objectives of death education, will grow. The Act of Hospice and Palliative Care and Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment for Patients at the End of Life provided a new source of momentum to death education for both laypersons and medical professionals, as the importance of education on death is widely recognized. However, problems remain regarding how to prepare people for productive conversations at the end-of-life and how to secure the continuity of care. Different focuses and deficiencies are observed in death education programs for each category of learner. In education for laypeople, tangible information on how to actualize one’s existential and personal understanding of death through real-life options is lacking, except for presenting the “protocol” of the Act. Conversely, basic medical education lacks an understanding of or confrontation with death on the existential and personal levels. Death education should aim to build a shared understanding that can facilitate communication between the two groups. The scant overlap between layperson education and basic medical education even after the Act’s enactment is worrisome. Further fundamental changes in death education are required regarding its content. Topics that patients and doctors can share and discuss regarding death and end-of-life care should be discovered and provided as educational content both to laypeople and future medical professionals.

Public debates and discussions concerning physician-assisted suicide have recently arisen in South Korea in response to proposals made in the National Assembly for new legislation governing this and other aspects of end-of-life medical care. Two contrasting positions can be discerned in these debates: one position views physician-assisted suicide as respecting patients’ autonomy and guaranteeing their right to a “death with dignity”; the other argues that physician-assisted suicide might be transformed into a “duty to die,” especially since dying care has not yet been well established in Korea. On this latter view, the expansion of hospice for end-of-life care should precede the introduction of physician-assisted suicide. The present article examines these two views in detail and explores the state of end-of-life medical care in Korea.