Surrogate Decision Making
Shared Decision Making
Withholding and Withdrawing Life-Sustaining Treatment
The Doctrine of Double Effect and End-of-Life Care
Futile and Potentially Inappropriate Treatment
Describe the standards of surrogate decision making.
Review the concept of shared decision making.
Discuss whether there is an ethical distinction between withholding and withdrawing life support.
Highlight the important of the principle of double effect to end-of-life care.
Define futile and potentially inappropriate treatment and present a strategy for managing intractable clinician-family conflicts.
This chapter is organized around the incremental presentation of a clinical case. The goal is to use the case to summarize key concepts related to ethical issues in ICUs. In the first section, the case is introduced, and each subsequent section provides additional case information that informs the discussion of the next topic.