Is withdrawing life-sustaining treatment legal?
Are physicians legally required to provide all life-sustaining measures possible? No. To the contrary, patients have a right to refuse any medical treatment, even life-sustaining treatments such as mechanical ventilation, or even artificial hydration and nutrition.
Can you be denied life saving treatment?
When patients in need explicitly refuse life-sustaining emergency treatment, the physician must choose between the undesirable options of forgoing beneficial treatment and forcing treatment on a competent but unwilling patient [1], both of which have potential ethical and legal consequences.
What are considered life-sustaining treatments?
Life-sustaining treatment is any treatment that serves to prolong life without reversing the underlying medical condition. Life-sustaining treatment may include, but is not limited to, mechanical ventilation, renal dialysis, chemotherapy, antibiotics, and artificial nutrition and hydration.
What criteria would you use to determine whether to terminate life-sustaining treatment?
When is it justifiable to discontinue life-sustaining treatments? If the patient has the ability to make decisions, fully understands the consequences of their decision, and states they no longer want a treatment, it is justifiable to withdraw the treatment.
Can doctors turn off life support without family consent California?
The California Heath Care Decisions law recognizes the right of an adult person to instruct a physician to withhold or withdraw life sustaining treatment because adults have a fundamental right to control decisions relating to the rendering of their own medical care, including the decision to have life-sustaining …
Can doctors turn off life support without family consent United States?
For instance, according to the American Thoracic Society,14 although doctors should consider both medical and patient values when making treatment recommendations, they may withhold or withdraw treatment without the consent of patients or surrogates if the patient’s survival would not be meaningful in quality or …
Can clinically assisted nutrition and hydration legally be withdrawn?
The US Supreme Court, in its Nancy Cruzan decision,15 reiterated that nutrition and hydration are medical treatments and as such can be legally withheld or withdrawn under appropriate medical and ethical cir- cumstances.
Can doctors turn off life support without family consent UK?
Under existing law, a patient who has the capacity to decide may refuse any treatment, even if the result is certain death. Doctors cannot carry out treatment without a patient’s consent, if the patient is able to give it.
Can the government force medical treatment?
For the most part, adults can decline medical treatment. Doctors and medical professionals require informed consent from patients before any treatment, and without that consent, they are prohibited from forcibly administering medical care.
When can a patient refuse treatment?
For consent to treatment or refusal of treatment to be valid, the decision must be voluntary and you must be appropriately informed: Voluntary: you must make your decision to consent to or refuse treatment alone, and your decision must not be due to pressure by healthcare professionals, friends or family.