Advance healthcare directives : binding or informational value?

Article indépendant

MONTANARI VERGALLO, Gianluca

Advance directives entail a refusal expressed by a still-healthy patient. Three consequences stem from that fact: (a) advance refusal is unspecific, since it is impossible to predict what the patient's conditions and the risk-benefit ratio may be in the foreseeable future; (b) those decisions cannot be as well informed as those formulated while the disease is in progress; (c) while both current consent and refusal can be revoked as the disease unfolds, until the treatment starts out, advance directives become effective when the patient becomes incapable or unconscious; such decisions can therefore not be revoked at any stage of the disease. Therefore, advance directives are binding for doctors only at the stage of advance treatment planning, i.e., only if they refer to an illness already in progress.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0963180119000823

Voir la revue «Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics, 29»

Autres numéros de la revue «Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics»

• Description
• Sujet/Public
• Outil
• Outil d'anticipation
• Gestion