Main description:

The practice of intensive care medicine raises multiple legal and ethical issues on a daily basis, making it increasingly difficult to know who to admit and when, at what stage invasive management should be withdrawn, and who, importantly, should decide? These profound dilemmas, already complicated in a setting of scarce resources, mandate an understanding of law and ethics for those working in intensive care medicine.

Clinically focused, this book explains the relevance of landmark rulings to aid your day-to-day decision-making. A spectrum of ethical and legal controversies in critical care are addressed to demonstrate how law and ethics affects the care available to patients and vice versa.

Discussion of conflict resolution advises the options open to you when agreement on treatment decisions or withdrawal cannot be reached. The literature and variations surrounding Do Not Attempt Resuscitation decisions are outlined to help you navigate this complex area. This edition also provides an up-to-date analysis of issues such as futility and depreciation of liberty.

Featuring contributions from leading legal and medical experts, this important reference should be read by every critical care professional.

Contents:

Section A: Listening to Patients
1: Dominic Bell: Consent for Intensive Care: Public and Political Expectations vs. Conceptual and Practical Hurdles
2: Alex Ruck Keene and Zoe Fritz: Refusing and Demanding Medical Treatment in Intensive Care
3: Hazel Biggs: DNAR: to Resuscitate or not to Resuscitate? Rights, Wrongs, Ethics and the Voice of the Patient
Section B: Listening to Doctors, Parents, and Relatives
4: Therese Callus: Spanner in the Works or Cogs in a Wheel? Parents and Decision-making for Critically Ill Young Children
5: Daniele Bryden: Adults who Lack Capacity to Consent and Deprivation of Liberty
6: Christopher Newdick and Christopher Danbury: Promoting the Best Possible Death - Futility in Terminally Ill Patients Who Lack Capacity
7: Dale Gardiner and Andrew McGee: Diagnosing Death
Section C: External influences
8: John Coggon and Louise Austin: Doing What's Best: Organ Donation and Intensive Care
9: Carl Waldmann, Neil Soni, and Andrew Lawson: Conflicts of Interest
10: Rosaleen Baruah: Social Media Pressures in Intensive Care
11: Christopher Danbury, Christopher Newdick, Alex Ruck Keene, and Carl Waldmann: Pandemic Planning after Covid-19