Limitations of terms currently used to describe end of life and end-of-life care constrain nursing care to
those who are in need of end-of-life care and cause ethical tensions between what nurses should do and
can/would do. As the NIH report10 mentioned, all people, in some respects, are approaching death from the
moment they are born. And death will come whether or not the person or health-care providers know when it
is coming. Although advancement in medical technology sometimes gives us an illusion of death as an
option, death is not medically treatable or avoidable and it should not be addressed solely from a medical
treatment standpoint.