PHLB09H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Paternalism
Document Summary
Classic pattern of paternalism involves a physician who wants to treat a patient who prefers not to be treated. Sometimes things happen the other way around when the patient or the patients family wants a treatment that the physician, typically from beneficent motives, does not want to provide. Main moral conflict is bw patient autonomy and the physicians view of what constitutes morally acceptable care. Most dramatic of such cases is center on whether to supply life sustaining treatment to the patient (read over helga wanglie example pg 85) Such physician patient conflicts are commonly described as medical futility. Medical futility---the alleged pointlessness or ineffectiveness of administering particular treatments. Physicians may claim that a treatment is futile and therefore not be used or continued. Patients or their surrogates ,ay reject the label of futility and insists that anything that can be done must be done.
