Despite advances in palliative medicine, many patients still experience suffering in their last days of life. In cases of severe suffering, there may be no other option than to reduce a patient’s consciousness in order to take away her experience of suffering. This practice, called continuous sedation at the end of life, is the topic of this book. It raises many ethical questions, for example due to its (perceived) similarity with euthanasia, and the fact that it is often combined with withholding artificially administered nutrition and hydration. These and other relevant issues will be discussed in the first part of this dissertation. Subsequently, some of the ‘standard’ ways in which continuous sedation is portrayed in international literature are investigated, and more importantly, their ethical soundness is analysed. In the final part, the ways in which Flemish medical practitioners actually experience continuous sedation at the end of life are discussed, based on the results of a focus group study. As such, this dissertation provides insight into both the ethical and the practical aspects of this increasingly prevalent end of life practice
