@article{ref1,
title=""I have lost my appetite": Dealing with a patient's wish to die and accompanying patients who voluntarily choose to stop eating and drinking",
journal="Gynakologie",
year="2022",
author="Batzler, Y.-n. and Schallenburger, M. and Schwartz, J. and Neukirchen, M.",
volume="55",
number="11",
pages="830-836",
abstract="A notable percentage of patients with a life-limiting disease express a wish to die. These wishes should be discussed and dealt with in a structured manner. This includes providing patients with information regarding existing possibilities in palliative symptom management, information about suicide prevention, a psychiatric examination to determine the possibility of depression and the capacity to consent and, if desired, social, spiritual and psychological counselling. Nonetheless, a patient's wish to die may persist. One way in which a patient may end their life is by voluntarily choosing to stop eating and drinking (VSED). However, this process may cause an enormous burden of symptoms on the patient, such as thirst and delirium. Therefore, VSED should only be performed if palliatively trained medical teams are available. It is important to note that team members may experience moral distress while accompanying a patient in this process. To protect them, team members should attend a discussion with a trained ethics committee and engage in repeated case discussions within the team itself. In addition, case supervision should take place to strengthen resilience in the team. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Medizin Verlag GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature.<p /><p>Language: de</p>",
language="de",
issn="2731-7102",
doi="10.1007/s00129-022-05002-8",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00129-022-05002-8"
}