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- Title
Responding to the Refusal of Care in the Emergency Department.
- Authors
Nelson, Jennifer; Venkat, Arvind; Davenport, Moira
- Abstract
The emergency department (ED) serves as the primary gateway for acute care and the source of health care of last resort. Emergency physicians are commonly expected to rapidly assess and treat patients with a variety of life-threatening conditions. However, patients do refuse recommended therapy, even when the consequences are significant morbidity and even mortality. This raises the ethical dilemma of how emergency physicians and ED staff can rapidly determine whether patient refusal of treatment recommendations is based on intact decision-making capacity and how to respond in an appropriate manner when the declining of necessary care by the patient is lacking a basis in informed judgment. This article presents a case that illustrates the ethical tensions raised by the refusal of life-sustaining care in the ED and how such situations can be approached in an ethically appropriate manner.
- Publication
Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, 2014, Vol 4, Issue 1, p75
- ISSN
2157-1732
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/nib.2014.0008