Study finds many doctors disregard wishes of cancer patients. Frequently, patients with advanced cancer simply want to be made as comfortable as possible as they wind down their final days. Many of these patients are receiving treatment focused on extending their lives rather than easing their pain.

[u/mvea]

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2025/08/26/cancer-patients-treatment-wishes-study/7921756217134/

[u/WickedLies21]

I’m a hospice nurse and have been for the last 4 years. Pain medication doesn’t speed up death. This is a very common misconception and very untrue. It doesn’t speed up or slow down the process, it just makes the dying process less painful. Any time that you move a patient- from home to a respite facility, or respite to home, we often see a significant decline in patients. When a patient is transitioning, we do not recommend transferring them at all due to this. Even a stable patient, can begin a significant decline after a move. I would blame her decline potentially on the move but I can guarantee it wasn’t the pain meds.

[u/cchoe1 → u/WickedLies21]

Why does moving a patient cause significant decline?

[u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot → u/cchoe1]

People who are already in a fragile state don’t handle having their entire world upended like that. Going from familiar surroundings, people, and routines to new surroundings, new people, and entirely different routines is extremely stressful for someone who is medically fragile.

[u/MarsupialMisanthrope → u/MamaNyxieUnderfoot]

That, and patients often seem to wait until they’re alone to pass. A transition from home hospice to respite gives them a chance.

[u/WickedLies21 → u/cchoe1]

I don’t know the true scientific underlying causes but I have seen it happen over and over again. I warn my families about. I had one patient with liver cancer who was super stable. He was moving cross county a week after coming onto services and I warned his daughter about this phenomenon. He died 10 days after the move and prior to that, he could have had months of life left. But he wanted to be in his childhood home with his family around him when he died so moving and taking the risk was more important to him, so we made it happen. I think it’s because the body is already fighting so many battles at end of life and what we think is a simple process, is actually very difficult on their mind and body. You think, they’re just lying in a stretcher or sitting in a wheelchair, they didn’t even do anything but that simple process just depletes their energy stores and sometimes they cannot recover.

[u/Johnny_Appleweed → u/[deleted]]

It’s not that medical professionals aren’t familiar with the principle of double effect, it’s that several studies have shown that commonly used end-of-life palliative medications including morphine don’t actually hasten death. I don’t know when your legal studies textbook was written, but the example they used included incorrect medical information.