Joint lecture by Prof. Heinrich Assel, theologian, and Dr. Inkeri Beland, physician, on questions of end-of-life care from a theological and medical perspective.
What should be standardized in end-of-life care - and what should not be standardized and regulated by law? Doctors and nurses working in palliative medicine are familiar with the tension between patient autonomy and medical responsibility. Questions of end-of-life care have long formed an intersection between medical ethics and religious orientation.
New questions are currently emerging, e.g. assisted suicide. They are highly ideologically charged. However, they are complex in medical, psycho-social, legal and religious terms. Doctors with many years of experience in pain therapy are also skeptical about "too much" legislative regulation.
