ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of the patient’s age in Israeli nurses’ attitudes and feelings regarding treatment of terminally ill patients at the end stages of their lives. One of the basic principles in the ethical code of physicians and nurses as embedded in the Hippocratic Oath, and redefined by professional associations all over the world, is the universalistic approach towards patients. Treating dying patients is especially difficult and demanding for health care providers because it confronts them with what is often perceived as a medical failure to sustain life. It is also difficult because it faces them with their own death and raises their death anxiety. Awareness of the problems of health care providers in treating dying patients, and of the negative outcomes to the patients, brought about the development of special training interventions for nurses, mainly in hospice programs.
