End-of-life issues for aboriginal patients: a literature review.

The objective of this article is to understand some of the cross-cultural issues in providing palliative care to aboriginal patients.  Studies were selected based on their focus on both general cross-cultural caregiving and, in particular, end-of-life decision making and treatment. Only 39 relevant articles were found, half of which were opinion pieces by experienced nonaboriginal professionals; 14 were qualitative research projects from nursing and anthropologic perspectives.