Healthcare Law & Ethics class - online discussion Personal Statement - 1

Healthcare Law & Ethics class - online discussion - Personal Statement Example The court in U.S alone has allowed 130 patients to exercise their right of refusing from help of medical equipments to keep them alive. There are four categories in medical practice, which can lead to death in patients. Foremost, withholding or withdrawing from life saving treatments in patients, euthanasia, provision of palliative treatment and assisted suicide. Any life saving treatment can prolong death, without reversing the cause of dieses or medical conditions. Every physician is the healer and reliever of diseases, injuries and sufferings in patients. It is their ethical and moral duty to try their best to save the lives of their patients. The question arises when this duty comes in clash with the right of the patient to make decision about his own life, known as patient autonomy. When the patient, possesses the capacity of making decision to receive any medical treatment he is offered or to refuse from taking any unwanted treatment, while there are no particular prevailing obligations, then his decision should be weighted more than the ethical duty of the physician. As per the medical principles of ‘beneficence and non-maleficence’, the physicians are required to use the treatment that is best to their knowledge for saving the lives of the patients and provide them with relieve from sufferings and pains. Simultaneously, under no conditions are the physicians allowed to use their knowledge or skills to harm the patients. Prior to undertaking any such action like withdrawing/ withholding medical treatment of patient based on patient’s autonomy, the physicians must carefully value the consequences of making such decision. There are strong societal consequences regarding such acts, where the inability of the patient to bear the medical cost, leading him to voluntarily opt for withdrawing of life saving treatment, can be considered as society/government inability to financially help those who were in dire need