Philosophy 2715F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Resource Allocation, Confidence Interval

• School: Western University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: Philosophy 2715F/G
• Professor: C. Weijer

Document Summary

The right of self-determination means the patient has the right to refuse any treatment, even if life saving. Must physicians accede to such a demand. If a patient may refuse any treatment, does she have the right to demand a particular treatment. Futility is a concept that allows physicians to not offer futile treatment to patients and refuse demands for such treatment. (cid:862)[f]utilit(cid:455) is a professio(cid:374)al judg(cid:373)e(cid:374)t that takes pre(cid:272)ede(cid:374)(cid:272)e o(cid:448)er patie(cid:374)t auto(cid:374)o(cid:373)(cid:455) a(cid:374)d per(cid:373)its physicians to withhold or withdraw care deemed to be inappropriate without subjecting such a decisio(cid:374) to patie(cid:374)t appro(cid:448)al(cid:863) Tool for physicians to not offer treatment if treatment is believed to be futile. If you apply a confidence interval to 0/100 successes, physicians can be. 95% confident that there would be no more than 3 successes in comparable trials: pretty sure that we are dealing with something that is less than 3% effective.