End of Life and Autonomy: The Case for Relational Nudges in End-of-Life Decision-Making Law and Policy

Megan S. Wright, JD, PhD, has been a Postdoctoral Associate in Medical Ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College and a Research Fellow at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School. She will be at Penn State in the fall. Her new article in the Maryland Law Review is "End of Life and Autonomy: The Case for Relational Nudges in End-of-Life Decision-Making Law and Policy."
Autonomy is a central principle in many areas of health law. In the case of end-of-life decision-making law and policy, however, the principle of autonomy requires revision. On the whole, law conceptualizes autonomy at the end of life as an individual making private, personal decisions based solely on their interests and values, and independent of others. But ordinary people understand autonomous decisionmaking at the end of life differently, in a way that acknowledges the importance of their interpersonal relationships.
Social science research has documented that strengthening relationships with others, sharing responsibility in the decisionmaking process with healthcare providers, and taking care to not burden loved ones become important when confronting death and making decisions at the end of life. The divergence in how law and most people conceptualize autonomy becomes particularly consequential when people do not have decision-making capacity when an end-of-life decision must be made, and have not...

Source: blog.bioethics.net - July 8, 2018 Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs