Conflicts between Patients' Wishes to Forgo Treatment and the Policies of Health Care Facilities

Abstract

The right of patients to forgo life-sustaining treatment has been well established in health law and medical ethics. But do patients also have a right to compel health care facilities or their staffs to participate in carrying out such a decision? What happens when an institution has enunciated a treatment philosophy that is incompatible with a patient's or family's request to discontinue life support? If institutions and their staffs refuse to execute a patient's request, how can that patient's right to forgo life-sustaining treatment be effectuated? In recent cases involving decisions to forgo artificial feeding, courts have held that the . . .