ETHICS MIDTERM

Advanced Directives have FAILED

• - living wills do not live up to their expectations
• - their expectations were unrealistic from the start

Advanced directives HAVE NOT failed

- new process of introducing advanced directives can achieve their original aims

Adolescents should be allowed to make their own decisions

-adolescents with normal cognitive and developmental skills have the capacity to make decisions about their own health care, advance directives can give older peds patients a voice in their care

adolescents SHOULD NOT be able to make their own life and death decisions

- parents are responsible for making their child's health care decisions, children need to develop virtues

Physicians should assist patients in suicide

-a physician's main duties are to respect patient autonomy and to relieve suffering

Physicians should NOT assist in patient suicide

- if this becomes legal, it will begin a slippery slope, to subsititute for interventions that otherwise might enhance the quality of life for dying patients