Paula Tironi, JD, LLM and Monique M. Karaganis, MD
While parents often have legal authority to make decisions regarding pediatric palliative care, federal and state statutory and case laws, like CAPTA, impose significant restrictions on that authority.
An examination of some of the factors that can weaken the therapeutic nature of the patient-physician relationship and how a physician can resolve them in the patient's best interest.
Physicians do not have to give therapies or perform procedures that they judge to be futile and Catholic patients have the moral right to determine what is extraordinary or ordinary care.
Joseph Turow, PhD, Robert Gellman, JD, and Judith Turow, MD
Health marketers use a number of means to collect information about consumers, which when combined with health record information, could constitute a violation of patient privacy.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
When evaluating the developments and complications of a marginally viable premature infant, physicians and parents must work together to decide on treatment that is in the infant’s best interest.