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About Intending Death: The Family and Quality of Care
Michael D. Fetters, MD
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Arch Fam Med. 1994;3(3):217.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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I applaud Freeman and Pellegrino1 for furthering the discussion on physician-assisted suicide and intending death. However, while they succinctly evaluated the values and perspectives of patients and physicians, those of the family and society were not well articulated. Moreover, their emphasis on the ultimately similar ethical treatment of one patient raises the question of quality of health care outcomes for patients with similar illnesses who receive care from providers with dissimilar ethical approaches.
In their first mention of surrogate decision makers, they state that life-support decisions "must be made by and with the patients or in consultation with their valid surrogates." The use of "or" implies that the family is excluded from the decision-making process unless the patient is incompetent. The authors allude to legitimate family interests again when they state that balancing the interrelationships between effectiveness, benefit, and burden should be possible "in consultation with the patient and/or
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
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