Patient Autonomy and Advance Directives in Korea

Law, autonomy and advance directives.

The principle of autonomy underpins legal regulation of advance directives that refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. The primacy of autonomy in this domain is recognised expressly in the case law, through judicial pronouncement, and implicitly in most Australian jurisdictions, through enactment into statute of the right to make an advance directive. This article seeks to justify autonomy a...

Preferences for Advance Directives in Korea

Background. The goal of advance directives is to help patients retain their dignity and autonomy by making their own decisions regarding end-stage medical treatment. The purpose of this study was to examine preferences of advance directives among general population in Korea. Method. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was performed from October 2007 to June 2008 in Seoul, Korea. A total of 336...

[Psychiatric advance directives and the role of autonomy].

Although psychiatric advance directives (PADs) are grounded in the ethics of autonomy, the relationship between the two is unclear. PADs are legal documents that allow individuals with mental illness to record their treatment preferences should they become incompetent in the future. The relationship between autonomy and PADs has been discussed in ethical, legal, and philosophical terms, but has...

Directives Between Respect 3 for Patient Autonomy and Paternalism

Dementia, death and advance directives.

This article considers the ethics of advance directives, especially in relation to conditions such as dementia. For some choices, such as over whether one's life should end at home or in a hospice, advance directives can be very enlightened and helpful. For others, such as those to end the life of an autonomous subject, against their will, have no moral appeal and would rightly be ignored. In a...