Hospice Care

Warm, personal patient and family-centered care for a person with a terminal illness.

Palliative Care

Care aimed at relieving pain and allowing the terminally ill to die in peace, comfort, and dignity.

Terminal Drop

Sudden decrease in cognitive functioning shortly before death.

Bereavement

Loss, due to death, of someone to whom one feels close and the process of adjustment to the loss.

Grief

Emotional response experienced in the early phases of bereavement.

Grief Work

  Common pattern of working out of psychological issues connected with grief, in which the bereaved person accepts the loss, releases the bond with the deceased, and rebuilds a life without that person.

Passive Euthenasia

Deliberate with-holding or discontinuing of life-prolonging treatment of a terminally ill person in order to end suffering or allow death with dignity.

Active Euthanasia

Deliberate action taken to shorten the life of a terminally ill person in order to end suffering or to allow death with dignity; also called mercy killing.

Advance Directive (Living Will)

Document specifying the type of care wanted by the maker in the event of terminal illness.

Durable Power of Attorney

Legal instrument that appoints an individual to make decisions in the event of another person's incapacitation.

Assisted suicide

Death in which a physician or someone else helps a person take their own life.