Refusing Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment and the ECHR

The ethics of refusing medical treatment.

Withholding life prolonging treatment, and self deception.

OBJECTIVES To compare non-treatment decision making by general practitioners and geriatricians in response to vignettes. To see whether the doctors' decisions were informed by ethical or legal reasoning. DESIGN Qualitative study in which consultant geriatricians and general practitioners (GPs) randomly selected from a list of local practitioners were interviewed. The doctors were asked whethe...

The Appleton International Conference: developing guidelines for decisions to forgo life-prolonging medical treatment.

Refusing life-sustaining treatment: can we just say no?

A nationwide study of decisions to forego life-prolonging treatment in Dutch medical practice.

BACKGROUND Decisions to withhold or withdraw life-prolonging treatment in terminally ill patients are common in some areas of medical practice. Information about the frequency and background of these decisions is generally limited to specific clinical settings. This article describes the practice of withholding or withdrawing life-prolonging treatment in the Netherlands. METHODS Questionnaire...