Prolonger la vie ou envisager la mort ? Quelques enjeux de la prise de décision lors de maladies graves

• Main Authors: Sylvie Fortin, Josiane Le Gall, Geneviève Dorval
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Association Anthropologie Médicale Appliquée au Développement et à la Santé 2016-06-01
• Series: Anthropologie & Santé
• Subjects: decision-making; uncertainty; serious illness; plural norms; ethics
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/anthropologiesante/2081

In hospitals, life and death are closely linked and engage multiple questions in regards to quality of life and death issues, choices (pursuit or withdrawal of life sustaining interventions), decision-making and the legitimacy of the people involved in this process (patients, families, caregivers). In this paper, we share our thoughts on the challenges and issues raised by decision-making in critical illness contexts. Stemming from our ethnographic work in Quebec and Canadian hospital settings, the issues raised in this paper embrace the multiplicity of actors involved in this decision making process, a process crossed with uncertainty. We question the norms and values enacted in this context and how, ultimately, therapeutic paths become a space where different moral worlds can meet.