 |
|
COMMENTS AND OPINIONS
Physicians and Decision Making in Dementia—Reply
Alexia Torke, MD;
G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS;
John Lantos, MD;
Mark Siegler, MD
|
|
| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings. |
|
|
|
In reply
Rozzini and Trabucchi raise the issue of whether the relationship-centered guidelines we propose for surrogate decision making are useful in clinical practice. Instead, they propose that physicians ought to have "the final responsibility" to make surrogate decisions after a careful consideration of the patient, the surrogate, and the physician's own moral beliefs. We agree with Rozzini and Trabucchi that sharing the burden of decision making is a duty of a caring physician but do not agree that increased physician authority is the solution.
When physicians and surrogates reach an irresolvable conflict, the law should provide a mechanism for making patient care decisions. In such cases, the legal system in the United States gives the surrogate decision maker a great deal of authority.1 Case law and state statutes also specify that the surrogate decision maker . . . [Full Text of this Article]
AUTHOR INFORMATION
RELATED LETTER
Physicians and Decision Making in Dementia
Renzo Rozzini and Marco Trabucchi
Arch Intern Med. 2008;168(2):241.
EXTRACT
| FULL TEXT
RELATED ARTICLE
The Physician-Surrogate Relationship
Alexia M. Torke, G. Caleb Alexander, John Lantos, and Mark Siegler
Arch Intern Med. 2007;167(11):1117-1121.
ABSTRACT
| FULL TEXT
|
