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 argument that the concept of judicious dissent can resolve the debate over a physician’s conscience-based right to refuse to provide lawful services.
An argument that an individual physician’s conscience-based decision not to offer specific, lawful medical services should not restrict patients’ access to those services.
Physicians who base end-of-life care decisions for patients on their own preferences may offer less treatment than the patients themselves would have wanted.
Should physicians engage beliefs and practices that do not agree with their medical judgment as a means to securing patient adherence to recommended treatment?
Advance directives do not always resolve questions about the best care for patients who no longer have decision-making capacity; physicians and patient surrogates can take alternative approaches to arrive at the best care decision.
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.
Frank A. Chervenak, MD and Laurence B. McCullough, PhD
Physicians can fulfill their professional responsibilities to patients when those responsibilities conflict with moral commitments of the hospital or clinic where the patient encounter occurs.