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Avoiding Family Feuds: Responding to Surrogate Demands for Life-Sustaining Interventions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Ann Alpers  and
Bernard Lo
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Extract

The laws and ethical guidelines governing decision making for incompetent patients evolved from controversies in which family members refused life-sustaining interventions. These cases led to a consensus that advance directives to limit interventions should be respected and that a surrogate designated by the patient or specified by statute could refuse interventions, even when other relatives disagreed. Surrogate decision-making statutes and ethical principles about respect for delegated autonomy promote an active role for family members or other surrogates in medical decisions for incompetent patients. Inviting surrogates to participate actively in medical decisions recognizes the importance of the patient's personal community and assures that decisions will reflect the patient's own preferences and values.

The standard approach to decisions for incompetent adults gives advance directives priority over a surrogate's substituted judgment, which in turn has priority over assessments of the patient's best interest. A patient may express advance directives by appointing a proxy, stating specific preferences, or articulating general values. We use case examples to illustrate the limitations of all three types of advance directives.

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , Spring 1999 , pp. 74 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1999

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