ABSTRACT

There might be many ethical problems about care and managementof terminal patients related to death. In advanced countries, paincare and hospice medicine terminal patients has already beenuniversal. The purpose of this paper was to identify hospice andpalliative care for terminal cancer patients and to discuss theethical issues in Korea. For the past several decades, hospice andpalliative care services, which covered with health insurancesystem, for terminal cancer patients have been carried out in Koreaas a comprehensive package of medical services to take care ofdeath-facing terminal patients and their families with affection. Butmany ethical problems have been occurred in medical fields whileserving the hospice and palliative care served. The problems ofdefining death, brain death, end of life-sustaining treatment andadvance directives, euthanasia, organ donation or transplantationand so on were discussed in this paper.