Title: New directions in nursing home ethics. (includes
bibliography) (Special Supplement)
Authors: Collopy, Bart; Boyle, Philip; Jennings, Bruce
Citation: The Hastings Center Report, March-April 1991 v21 n2 pS1(15)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Long-term care facilities_Moral and ethical aspects
Nursing homes_Moral and ethical aspects
============================================================
Full Text COPYRIGHT The Hasting Center 1991
New Directions in Nursing Home Ethics
Nursing homes can be frightening and depressing places. They remind us of our own mortality and of the inevitable time when most of us will face the frailty, ailments, and incapacities of old age. At the same time, nursing homes are places of refuge and respite; essential places to which exhausted families turn when they can't manage at home and when adequate community support is unavailable or unavailing. For some residents, too, moving to a nursing home represents escape from the loneliness, isolation, and danger of a solitary house or apartment. It means return to a social setting and a community of care and concern. Nursing homes are places to go home fromùand many do. They can also beùand areùplaces people go home to.
How can we best make sense of the deep ambivalence, even the antipathy, that so many in our society feel toward nursing homes? How can we articulate a positive and constructive vision of the nursing home as a community of caring and a habitat that facilitates and nurtures the good living of the end of a life? To answer these questions we believe it is necessary to rethink some of the most common assumptions and orientations now applied to nursing homes in the regulations we impose upon them and in the ethical standards we ask them to meet.
First, we need to rethink the concept of autonomy, so central to ...