A Review of Terman's "Timely dying in dementia: Use patients' judgments and broaden the concept of suffering".

Dr. Terman's article discusses the use of advance care planning (ACP) and advance medical directives to address the desire of many individuals to avoid prolonged immersion in advanced dementia. Dr. Terman suggests expanding the concept of suffering to include elements of indignity and burdens on family caregivers in order to encourage cooperation from healthcare providers in allowing deeply demented patients to die. However, the author of the review disagrees with this approach, arguing that the existing legal and ethical frameworks already provide for the implementation of advance directives without the need to redefine suffering. The author also disagrees with Dr. Terman's position that non-suffering patients should not be allowed to die if they can still extract some rudimentary satisfaction from life. The author argues that it is both morally acceptable and legally required to implement advance instructions that define a non-suffering patient's current debilitated status as an intolerable quality of life. [Extracted from the article]