Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38152555›Full record

ArticlePalliative care and social practice2023

Should continuous deep sedation until death be legally regulated in Switzerland? An exploratory study with palliative care physicians.

Martyna Tomczyk, Roberto Andorno, Ralf J Jox

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In one paragraph

Article in Palliative care and social practice, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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1 · What the graph read from it

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2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Martyna TomczykInstitute of Humanities in Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Av. de Provence 82, Lausanne CH-1007, Switzerland.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5824-2411
Roberto AndornoInstitute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Ralf J JoxInstitute of Humanities in Medicine, Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Background: In Switzerland, continuous deep sedation until death (CDSUD) is not legally regulated and the current clinical practice guidelines on palliative sedation from 2005 do not refer to it. In contrast, in France, a neighbouring country, CDSUD is regulated by a specific law and professional guidelines. International studies show that in culturally polymorphic countries, there are variations in the end-of-life practices between linguistic regions and that a linguistic region shares many cultural characteristics with the neighbouring country. Objectives: This study aimed to explore the attitudes of palliative care physicians from the French-speaking part of Switzerland on the question of whether CDSUD should be legally regulated in the country, and to identify their arguments. Our study also aimed to assess whether a hypothetical Swiss law on CDSUD should be similar to the current legal regulation of this practice in France. Design: We conducted a multicentre exploratory qualitative study based on face-to-face interviews with palliative care physicians in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Methods: We analysed the interview transcripts using thematic analysis, combining deductive and inductive coding. Results: Most of the participants were opposed to having specific legal regulation of CDSUD in Switzerland. Their arguments were diverse: some focused on medical and epistemological aspects of CDSUD, whereas others emphasized the legal inconvenience of having such regulation. None had the opinion that, if CDSUD were legally regulated in Switzerland, the regulation should be similar to that in France. Conclusion: This study allows to better understand why palliative care physicians in French-speaking Switzerland may be reluctant to have legal regulation of CDSUD. Further studies covering the whole country would be needed to gain a more complete picture of Swiss palliative care physicians on this question.

Indexed as

continuous deep sedationlegal regulationpalliative carephysiciansqualitative studySwitzerland

Identifiers

PMID38152555
PMCPMC10752051

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