Institute:Office of National Coordinator (ONC) Workforce Training Curriculum
Component:The Culture of Health Care
Unit:Ethics and Professionalism
Lecture:Contemporary topics in medical ethics
Slide content:Medical Futility Treatment would not improve the patients condition Decision considers the unique situation of an individual patient Should be consistent with general professional standards Relationship to health care rationing Advocates say there is no cost/benefit analysis Question is benefit of treatment for individual 9
Slide notes:Medical futility is the term for a situation in which a physician concludes that providing treatment would not appreciably improve the patients condition. This decision is made by considering published evidence from studies of other patients and the physicians estimates about whether the individual patient would receive some benefit from the treatment being considered. Advocates of the concept of medical futility say that denying futile treatment is not health care rationing. The decision is not made by considering how much the treatment will cost but rather whether an individual patient will benefit. 9