RIGHT TO REFUSE OF TREATMENT
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Patients have a right to access medical care. However, some decide not to undergo medical treatment. The recommended treatment may speed healing or provide comfort, but the patient may refuse treatment. The patient’s right to refuse treatment is well guided and defined by legal and ethical principles. However, many doctors are always unsure how to responsibly and ethically respond as they simultaneously protect themselves against liability issues. When patients are in the right mental state, their decision to refuse treatment is always considered absolute regardless of the reason for refusal.
In many countries, patients are increasingly exercising the right to treatment refusal. Patients who consider themselves terminally ill or those who have been chronically ill are allowed by the law to opt for treatment refusal. It is difficult to assess whether the act of treatment refusal is an intelligent choice or a suicidal act. It has been proposed that the affective tone and dynamics of the patient’s reaction to the healthcare services and friends and families are of significant importance in accessing the act of treatment refusal. The exact process of determining these areas with the patient deciding to refuse treatment is always therapeutic in restoring authenticity or sense of control of the patient. Major world laws and faiths consider the willful ending of life to be unethical and illegal. The laws and faiths make a clear distinction between circumstances where the intentional ending of life may be considered wrong. Refusing care or treatment that can save an individual’s life or even prolong her life is a legal act. Therefore, in most circumstances, secular and faith-based morals give individuals the right to refuse treatment.
Bibliography
Desai, Previn. “A legal right to euthanasia, the most uncontroversial option: a reply to David Velleman.” Rerum Causae 9, no. 1 (2017).
Diekema, Douglas S. “Adolescent refusal of lifesaving treatment: are we asking the right questions?.” Adolescent Medicine-State of the Art Reviews 22, no. 2 (2011): 213.
Ryan, Christopher J., and Sascha Callaghan. “Legal and ethical aspects of refusing medical treatment after a suicide attempt: the Wooltorton case in the Australian context.” Medical Journal of Australia 193, no. 4 (2010): 239-242.
Tretyakov, Konstantin. “The Right to Die in the United States, Canada, and China: Legal Fictions and Their Utility in a Comparative Perspective.” U. Pa. JL & Soc. Change 21 (2018): 79.
