Abstract
Medical futility has been used increasingly by physicians to refer to the inappropriate application of medical intervention that is unlikely to produce any significant benefit for the patient. However, the concept of medical futility is controversial not only in its definition but also in its application. Decisions regarding end-of-life care in general and medical futility in particular are shaped by the inevitability of human death, limitations of medical sciences, scarcity of health resources, and various sociocultural issues.
In everyday clinical practice, physicians are under pressure to make decision about futile treatment and in some cases, there are disagreements between healthcare providers and patients’ family about the course of treatment deemed futile. The issue has divided experts in the relevant fields into two groups. The proponents of medical futility defend the physician’s exclusive right to determine the futility of treatment and decide whether treatment should be withheld or withdrawn. On the other hand, opponents believe that a discourse of power lies at the heart of the futility debate.
By elaborating the concept and controversy over medical futility, this entry presents a global review of the current approaches to the futility debate. It also examines different futility policy options and explains how futility policy can help healthcare professionals as well as family members to decide how aggressively to treat patients and when it is morally permissible to withhold or withdraw futile treatments.
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Further Readings
Bagheri, A. (Ed.). (2013). Medical futility: A cross-national study. London: Imperial College Press.
Rubin, S. B. (1999). When doctors say no: The battleground of medical futility. Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Schneiderman, L. J., & Jecker, N. S. (2011). Wrong medicine: Doctors, patients, and futile treatment (2nd ed.). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Zucker, M. B., & Zucker, H. D. (Eds.). (1997). Medical futility: And the evaluation of life-sustaining interventions. Ney York: Cambridge University Press.
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Bagheri, A. (2016). Futility. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_204
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