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.
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.
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.