Palliative care

One word on this list does more harm than any other, because it sounds like a single thing. Die Sterbehilfe is literally “help with dying”, and German uses it for four practices that medicine and the law keep strictly apart. Active help is die Tötung auf Verlangen, which remains a criminal offence. Passive help means withholding or stopping treatment that only prolongs dying. Indirect help is relief that accepts a shorter life as a side effect, the case covered by das Prinzip der Doppelwirkung. And die Suizidassistenz is supplying the means for a death the patient brings about. A headline about Sterbehilfe may mean any of these, and English readers tend to hear the first. On a ward, people avoid the umbrella word and name the practice instead; follow them.