Two US courts of appeals have ruled that competent, terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide. The cases are now before the US Supreme Court, which is expected to issue a ruling ...

The assumptions underlying the SUPPORT study may be incorrect. Informed patients may want interventions that other people regard as inappropriately aggressive.

We do not like the idea of doctors and nurses being forced to provide care that offends their sense of themselves and their art. But we like even less the idea of physicians allocating resources without the force of society's ...

OBJECTIVE: To describe how medical residents discuss do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders with patients. DESIGN: Prospective observational study. SETTING: Inpatient medical wards of one university tertiary care center, one urban ...

In June 1997, the US Supreme Court unanimously decided that competent, terminally ill patients have no general constitutional right to commit suicide or to obtain assistance in committing suicide. Thus, the broad prohibitions ...

BACKGROUND: Medical residents commonly discuss resuscitation decisions with hospitalized patients. Previous studies suggest that the quality of these discussions is poor. OBJECTIVE: To learn about residents' experience ...

In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed a Missouri ruling that sharply limited family decisions about life-sustaining treatment for incompetent patients. The Court held that the Constitution protects ...

Two state courts recently have ruled on the issue of who may make decisions about life-sustaining treatment for incompetent patients. In