ABSTRACT
Compassion and choices work to improve access to a full range of end-of-life options for terminally ill adults, including access to better pain management, palliative care, enrollment in hospice, and aid in dying. Compassion and choices encourage people to document their wishes in an advance directive to ensure that their end-of-life decisions are known. Compassion fatigue has been defined as a combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual depletion associated with caring for patients with significant emotional pain and physical distress. Compassion fatigue has been described among cancer-care providers, emergency room personnel, chaplains, and first responders, among others. This fatigue may impact healthcare providers in any specialty when, in the process of providing empathic support, they experience the pain of their patients and families. The health practitioner is deemed to be the “expert” in determining capacity as defined by the Healthcare Consent Act concerning treatment within his or her area of practice and expertise.
