New brain imaging suggests that asking patients to put themselves in their surrogates’ shoes when thinking about advance directives might lead to directives that better line up with what surrogates think they should decide.
Hydration at the end of life may be much less beneficial than generally assumed, but the emotional significance of nourishment to caregiving should not be underestimated.
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.
U.S. courts have ruled that device manufacturer representatives’ presence in the operating room does not make them responsible for the supervision of physicians or liable for the practice of unauthorized medicine.
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.