Ethical Dilemmas of End-of-Life Care in Intensive Care Unit: A Literature Review

Abstract

A B S T R A C T The end-of-life (EOL) care is the progressive terminal illness, leading to death; that in the situation the nurse have significant role in decision making. In decision making, temporarily, the nurse will experiences the ethical dilemmas, including in intensive care unit (ICU) with any factors resulting in problem in medical decision making. The literature review intends to analyze the description of ethical dilemmas occurred in intensive care unit, especially to the EOL care. A method used is critical review full text of 2007-2018 periods in English langguage. The multiple databases used is PubMed, Proquest and Google Scholar with keyword “End of Life Care” and “Nursing Ethic in critical care” and “issue End-of-life critical care”, and “Dilemmas Ethic in ICU.” The articles selected gradually by using of Appraisal tool of PRISMA and obtained 21 articles. The literature study obtaining 4 themes related to description of the ethical dilemmas in ICU including (1) the ethical principle involved in EOL care at ICU, (2) resource of ethical conflict in ICU, (3) impact of ethical conflict in ICU, and (4) response of nurse in dealing with ethical dilemmas. The discussion of literature review related to the perception of nurse on EOL care; that nurse have important role in medical decision making involving ethical principle in the implementation. it is required further research on exploration of nurse experience on implementation of ethical principle in case of EOL care. Kata kunci: End-of-life-care, nursing ethic in critical care, issue end of-life in critical care, ethical dilemmas in ICU