Advance directives are seen as a way to protect one's legal rights for refusal of treatment. ... Added to the moral, ethical and humane considerations, physicians also must keep the legal risks in mind. ... Actually the forms are not significant legal documents in and of themselves. ...
Statistics estimate that 1,000 to 7,000 individuals are put to death by euthanasia annually in the Netherlands, which is one of the few places where euthanasia is legal. ... The law permits patients or their surrogates to withhold or withdraw unwanted medical treatment even if that increases the likelihood that the patient will die, which means neither the law nor medical ethics requires that everything be done to keep a person alive. ...
If assisted suicide were legal, people would not have to go to extremes or take brutal measures to end their suffering. ... The outcome of these legal struggles is hard to predict, but the cause has picked up momentum since the story of a cancer patient, Brittany Maynard, went viral. There is opposition coming from people with concerns regarding doctor's ethics, as well as religious groups and disability activists who believe that assisted suicide suggests that the lives of disabled, old, and ill individuals are not worth living. ... Because assisted suicide is not legal in California, Ca...
In response to this, some medical schools have started teaching students how to break bad news to patients.11 The Ethics in Medicine Web site at the University of Washington School of Medicine contains a six-step protocol titled "Breaking Bad News." ... Negligence is the departure from the standard of due care toward patients and includes intentionally imposing unreasonable risks as well as unintentionally imposing risks through carelessness.1 Nurses can be held morally and legally blameworthy if they fail to provide care that avoids or minimizes the risk of harm to patients. ... The patie...
