Conceptual barriers to palliative sedation: insights from focus group interviews with specialist palliative care professionals.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Palliative sedation is considered an essential measure when other methods cannot provide sufficient symptom control in end-of-life. Prior research suggests that health care professionals find boundaries between palliative sedation, routine symptom management and euthanasia ambiguous. Appropriate implementation of palliative sedation depends on palliative care clinicians being confident in conceptual understanding of palliative sedation. The aim of this study was to understand specialist palliative care professionals' conceptualization of distinctions between symptom management, palliative sedation, and euthanasia; how perceived boundary ambiguities act as barriers to timely initiation of palliative sedation; and potential strategies to overcome these barriers.

Methods

SUBMITTER: Torvund S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12673737 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature