Bioethics for Clinicians: 16. Dealing With Demands for Inappropriate Treatment
Creator
Weijer, Charles
Singer, Peter A.
Dickens, Bernard M.
Workman, Stephen
Bibliographic Citation
Canadian Medical Association Journal. 1998 Oct 6; 159(7): 817-821.
Abstract
Demands by patients or their families for treatment thought to be inappropriate by health care providers constitute an important set of moral problems in clinical practice. A variety of approaches to such cases have been described in the literature, including medical futility, standard of care and negotiation. Medical futility fails because it confounds morally distinct cases: demand for an ineffective treatment and demand for an effective treatment that supports a controversial end (e.g., permanent unconsciousness). Medical futility is not necessary in the first case and is harmful in the second. Ineffective treatment falls outside the standard of care, and thus health care workers have no obligation to provide it. Demands for treatment that supports controversial ends are difficult cases best addressed through open communication, negotiation and the use of conflict-resolution techniques. Institutions should ensure that fair and unambiguous procedures for dealing with such cases are laid out in policy statements.
Permanent Link
Find in a Libraryhttp://hdl.handle.net/10822/757728
Date
1998-10-06Subject
Allowing to Die; Bioethics; Case Studies; Communication; Decision Making; Dissent; Evidence-Based Medicine; Family Members; Futility; Health; Health Care; Legal Aspects; Life; Literature; Mediation; Medicine; Patient Care; Patients; Persistent Vegetative State; Physicians; Prolongation of Life; Refusal to Treat; Resuscitation; Resuscitation Orders; Standards; Terminally Ill; Unconsciousness; Values; Withholding Treatment;
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Bioethics for Clinicians: 16. Dealing With Demands for Inappropriate Treatment
Weijer, Charles; Singer, Peter A.; Dickens, Bernard M.; Workman, Stephen (1998-10-06)