Taking Advance Directives Seriously JM administrative reforms

administrative reforms

examining the evidence

chapters on consultation-liaison psychiatry

and Sermon on the Mount Sample

social policy

Taking Advance Directives Seriously JM administrative reformsIn the quarter century since the landmark Karen Ann Quinlan case, an ethical, legal, and societal consensus supporting patients' rights to refuse life sustaining treatment has become a cornerstone of bioethics. Patients now legally can write advance directives to govern their treatment decisions at a time of future incapacity, yet in clinical practice their wishes often are ignored. Examining the tension between incompetent patients' prior wishes and