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Advance Healthcare Directives: Binding or Informational Value?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2019

GIANLUCA MONTANARI VERGALLO
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Abstract:

Advance directives entail a refusal expressed by a still-healthy patient. Three consequences stem from that fact: (a) advance refusal is unspecific, since it is impossible to predict what the patient’s conditions and the risk-benefit ratio may be in the foreseeable future; (b) those decisions cannot be as well informed as those formulated while the disease is in progress; (c) while both current consent and refusal can be revoked as the disease unfolds, until the treatment starts out, advance directives become effective when the patient becomes incapable or unconscious; such decisions can therefore not be revoked at any stage of the disease. Therefore, advance directives are binding for doctors only at the stage of advance treatment planning, i.e., only if they refer to an illness already in progress.

Keywords

self-determinationadvance directivesadvance care planningbinding valueconscientious objection
Type
Special Section: Open Forum
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 98 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

Notes

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