Withholding and withdrawal of medical care.
Withdraw of health care is removing the health care services that are being given to patients. Stopping any treatment requires the physicians and patient to decide whether to control the treatment to continue. In therapy, the practice involves removing the therapy services most applying where the treatment is no longer effective in sustaining the patient's life. In some cases, the patients can decide to forgo the treatment by withdrawing treatment to allow them to die peacefully; the instances are ethically correct if they understand the consquences of treating its ineffectiveness in treatment (Bandrauk, Downar, & Paunovic, 2018). This requires the patient to take another form of therapy to help them maintain their life. In this case, the process does not involve euthanasia, where the therapies' removal aims to end the patient's life without inducing the process through applying another drug. The method of withdrawal on the treatment involves removing therapies such as ventilators and other agents such as vasoactive.
The decision to remove the treatment is based on the discussion with the relevant relative to deduce that the practice is done for the good of the patient of the family members. After the debate, the relative with an attorney gets into the agreement as the doctors give them time to contemplate the implication of the withdrawal of the medical care. For instance, a patient under medical service diagnosed with prolonged consciousness was presented to the family member to decide whether the hospital can withdraw the treatment. The case was on after the consideration of the implication in cases he wakes up. To conclude, the court presented the issues to decide whether the patient's treatment should be withdrawn and die slowly. In the circumstances, the consideration of the greater good of the family and that of the patient is done to determine the way forward in some cases where the patient can decide, thus the relative needs to follow the will of the patient in a case where their give their consent.
On the other hand, withholding medical treatment involves cases where the medical treatment is not started on the patient. The issue is usually applied when the physician wants to protect the patient from complications of side effects associated with prolonging the patient's life using technology. Withholding of the treatment, like in cases of chemotherapy, is considered where the implication of the treatment method is considered and the physician decides that the treatment will cause more harm (Wallerstedt,.et al., 2020) This results in withholding of the treatment to protect the patient from the consequences of engaging in the treatment. The patient or the relative decides whether a patient should undertake a treatment after considering the antidote's effects on the patient.
For instance, a case where a woman was having a stroke is presented to a hospital after collapsing in her home. After diagnosis, the doctor discovers that she had a severe stroke that she will likely not recover. Connecting her to a breathing machine will require her to take drugs to reduce the swelling in her brain, but she may suffer from cognitive impairment after recovering. After discussion with her nephew, they concluded that not to connect her to the machine but to allow her to experience normal death without pain.
According to the code of medical ethics, there is no difference between removing the treatment and withholding the therapy for a patient aiming at prolonging life. In this, the ethic is considered concerning the greater good of the patient through discussion with the patient or the surrogate on the implication of withdrawing or withholding treatment for the patient. In making the decision, the process is made ethical if it is done for the greater good of the patient's health when all the relevant information about the patient and their condition is provided.
References.
Bandrauk, N., Downar, J., & Paunovic, B. (2018). Withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment: The Canadian Critical Care Society position paper. Canadian Journal of Anesthesia/Journal canadien d'anesthésie, 65(1), 105-122.
Wallerstedt, S. M., Nilsson Ek, A., Olofsson Bagge, R., Kovács, A., Strandell, A., & Linderholm, B. (2020). Personalised medicine and the decision to withhold chemotherapy in early breast cancer with intermediate risk of recurrence–a systematic review and meta-analysis. European journal of clinical pharmacology, 76, 1199-1211.
