ArticleJournal of medical ethics2026
A qualitative study of the ethical issues encountered at end-of-life care at a university teaching hospital in Nigeria.
Article in Journal of medical ethics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Ethical perspectives in palliative care for chronic patients: a systematic review of nurses' experiences in home and hospital settings.BMC palliative care · 2026Pooled it
- Ethical issues in caring for older persons in Sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping review.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- Clinical and Ethical Approaches to Medical Futility in End-of-Life Care: A Scoping Review.Cureus · 2026Review
- Ethical Issues in Caring for Older Persons in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Scoping Review.Research square · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundEnd-of-life (EOL) care involves providing quality medical attention to the dying patient. It is fraught with some ethical challenges, often underexplored in African settings. This communication presents a qualitative analysis of ethical issues encountered by caregivers and their patients receiving EOL care in a teaching hospital in Nigeria.
methodsEthical issues in EOL care encountered by 40 people (dying patients, their families, nurses and doctors) at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria, were explored over 2 months. The participants' sociodemographic data were analysed using descriptive statistics, while qualitative data were analysed using a thematic framework. The transcripts were coded using NVivo V.12 software.
resultsAll participant groups encountered commonly reported ethical challenges in EOL care, including issues of medical futility, treatment refusal, truthful disclosures, families requesting that a competent patient not be informed about their condition, confidentiality, limiting or withdrawing a treatment, limited or insufficient pain management, conflicting interests in care, an unfair financial burden without the patient consent and an unfair burden on the healthcare system. Additionally, the uncommon issues included the patient's unwillingness to discuss their terminal status, families withdrawing due care and support prematurely and delayed referrals.
conclusionEthical issues are commonly encountered in caring for the patient at EOL in the Nigerian environment, notwithstanding the paucity of literature on them. This underscores the importance of adopting known preventive measures to eliminate or minimise these issues.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.