| active euthanasia | Intentionally ending a person's life.
|
 |
|
|
| anticipatory grief | Grief that is experienced before the death of a person.
|
|
|
|
| biological death | Occurs when it is no longer possible to discern an electrical charge in the tissues of the heart and lungs.
|
|
|
|
| brain death | Occurs when the brain fails to receive a sufficient supply of oxygen for a short period of time (usually 8 to 10 minutes).
|
|
|
|
| cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) | Technique for reviving an individual's lungs and heart that have ceased to function.
|
|
|
|
| clinical death | The individual is dead when his or her respiration and heartbeat have stopped.
|
|
|
|
| complicated grief | Prolonged and intensified grief; may take weeks or months to pass.
|
|
|
|
| delayed grief | Grief that is postponed for an inordinate time.
|
|
|
|
| distorted grief | Normal grief carried to an extreme degree; adoption of deceased person's ailments.
|
|
|
|
| Electroencephalogram (EEG) | Recording of the electrical activity produced by the firing of neurons in the brain.
|
|
|
|
| euthanasia | The ending of a life, usually in a person with a terminal illness, to prevent a prolonged and painful death.
|
|
|
|
| grief | An emotional response to the loss of another; includes feelings of anxiety, despair, sadness, and loneliness.
|
|
|
|
| health-care power of attorney | Legal document giving someone authority to make health-care decisions if one is incapacitated.
|
|
|
|
| hospice | A program providing comfort and supportive services to those near the end of life and to their families.
|
|
|
|
| legal death | A legal pronouncement by a qualified person that a patient should be considered dead under the law.
|
|
|
|
| living will | Legal document that describes specific life-prolonging medical treatments.
|
|
|
|
| mortality rate | The number of deaths in a population for a given year; typically, number of deaths per 1,000 people per year.
|
|
|
|
| mourning | Actions taken as a result of grieving.
|
|
|
|
| passive euthanasia | Refraining from continuing efforts to sustain someone's life.
|
|
|
|
| physician-assisted suicide (PAS) | Active euthanasia whereby doctors give patients death-inducing drugs.
|
|
|
|
| psychosomatic | Physical illness or symptom brought about by mental factors.
|
|
|
|
| social death | Point at which a patient is treated essentially as a corpse, although perhaps still "clinically" or "biologically" alive.
|