Medical Ethics and End-stage Patient Care at the Primary Care Level

Abstract

Introduction: The article reflects on the multidimensional and complex nature of ethics and its relationship to the medical sciences.

Objective: To reflect on the care of terminally ill patients from the point of view of medical ethics for comprehensive medical care at the primary level of care.

Methods: A qualitative study was carried out using documentary analysis, systematization, analysis and synthesis of publications on the subject studied as theoretical methods. For this purpose, the criteria of authors and results expressed in published articles were evaluated. Searches were carried out in Spanish and English through Google Scholar, and without time limit, both in the databases studied and in the product platforms of the National Council for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine of the United States of America and Elsevier. The terms: "medical ethics", "medical deontology", "physician-patient relationship", "terminal patient" and "palliative care" were used. Articles that were not peer-reviewed and those that did not show the full text were excluded. The information provided by each source was reviewed and synthesized.

Conclusions: In Cuba, bioethics advances to the extent allowed by the Primary Health Care strategy, with a resilient Family Physician and Nurse Practitioner Program and human values demonstrated nationally and internationally. The challenge is to stimulate the debate between knowledge to generate changes in favor of patients, families, communities and society.