Suspension of treatments in intensive care units and its ethical foundations

Abstract

Despite the sophisticated and expensive resources available at intensive care units, decisions are occasionally made to suspend extraordinary treatments. This work arose from the need of knowing what are the ethical values that Portuguese nurses consider as basis for these decisions in an intensive care unit. A detailed bibliographic research was carried out, jointly with a number of guiding questions. A total of 9 intensive care units
and a sample of 146 nurses were the field of study and the data obtained was statistically analyzed through the SPSS 11,0 program. The conclusion was that nurses considered that at the root of the decision of suspending extraordinary treatments, there is a concern with matters related to the patient care, which in fact translates into death at due sme, without delay, anticipation, or suffering, based on the beneficence principles
and not non-maleficence ones, with the individual good overcoming the common good.