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Treating the Patient to Benefit Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Howard Klepper  and
Robert D. Truog
Howard Klepper
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago, and Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Center for Biomedical Ethics.
Robert D. Truog
Affiliation:
Director of the Multidisciplinary Intensive Care Unit at Children's Hospital in Boston, and Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School.
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Extract

‘Treatment’ from which the patient cannot benefit is sometimes administered to a patient so that the comfort of the patient's family or caregivers may be increased. Is this permissible? To answer that question we will explore the interests of the permanently unconscious patient and the potential for such a patient's interests to conflict with those of her family and healthcare providers. We will conclude that in the likely absence of a specific advance directive from the patient providing for such circumstances, treatment for the benefit of the family may be given so long as it is not abusive. However, treatment solely for the comfort of caregivers may not be given without consent of the patient's surrogate decisionmakers.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , Summer 1997 , pp. 306 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

Notes

1. Feinberg J., . Social Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall 1973:26–8.Google Scholar

2. See note 1. Feinberg 1973:26.

3. Aristotle, . Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett 1985:23–24.Google Scholar