Bill to guarantee a dignified death and respect patient wishes

Automatic summary, not yet reviewed

1. The bill would recognize the rights of people at the end of their lives, the duties of the health professionals who care for them, and the guarantees that health and social institutions must provide.
2. It would apply throughout Spain, in both public and private health and social settings, and also to insurance entities offering services in Spain.
3. Anyone could refuse a treatment, including life support measures, even if it endangers their life, and that refusal would not reduce the care given to relieve pain and suffering.
4. People would have the right to quality palliative care, including palliative sedation even if it shortens life, and to receive it at home if they wish and it is not medically contraindicated.
5. People hospitalized at the end of life would have the right to a single room, visits from family and loved ones, spiritual care, and to say goodbye if they receive palliative sedation.
6. Health professionals would have to respect the patient's wishes, avoid futile overtreatment, and adjust therapeutic effort to the patient's condition, recording this in the medical record.

Who it affects

• People in terminal or agony situations and their families: They would receive new rights: information, decision-making about treatment, palliative care, companionship, and a single room.
• Health professionals: They would have new duties: respect patient wishes, check advance instruction registries, and avoid futile overtreatment.
• Public and private health and social care centers: They would have to guarantee these rights, provide palliative care, and have single rooms within one year.
• Health administrations: They would have to guarantee the rights, create a model advance instructions document, and evaluate the law each year.
• Minors: They would have the right to age-appropriate information, to be accompanied, and to be hospitalized with other minors.

Words worth knowing

Cuidados paliativos (palliative care)

Care aimed at controlling pain and other symptoms when the illness no longer responds to curative treatment, to achieve the best possible quality of life until the end.

Instrucciones previas (advance instructions, or living will)

A document in which an adult states in advance which treatments they do or do not want, for when they can no longer express it themselves.

Sedación paliativa (palliative sedation)

Giving drugs to reduce the patient's consciousness to relieve symptoms that do not respond to treatment, with the patient's consent.

Obstinación terapéutica (therapeutic obstinacy)

Keeping up futile treatments that only prolong biological life with no chance of improvement; the text calls it bad clinical practice.

Adecuación del esfuerzo terapéutico (adjusting therapeutic effort)

Withdrawing, adjusting, or not starting treatments when life expectancy is limited, while keeping palliative care.

It summarizes the text as it was introduced. It is written by artificial intelligence and may contain mistakes: the official text is what counts. Read the official text · How we make summaries