Discussion:
THE CRUZAN CASE
On June 15, 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its long-awaited decision in the Cruzan "right-to-die" case. The actual law established by this case is very narrow and is only tangentially related to the termination of life support. This decision has discomfited many physicians because it does not establish an easy-to-administer, national standard for the termination of life support. Cruzan is an important decision because it clarifies several issues surrounding the termination of care for incompetent patients. While it does not resolve the dilemmas posed by incompetent patients who have not properly formalized their wishes concerning continued care, Cruzan may prove to be a wise compromise for a difficult problem.
The specific facts of the Cruzan case are compelling: a young woman, brain injured in an automobile accident, was trapped in a persistent vegetative state for years. Brain atrophy made recovery or rehabilitation hopeless, and her family requested that her life support be terminated, but the state refused.
Cruzan is a hard case, and hard cases make bad law because they tempt judges and juries to help the injured party rather than follow the law. Physicians are not strangers to hard cases. Every birth injury case tempts juries to help the baby by disregarding the legal standard for proof of malpractice. The facts in Cruzan call out to the court to ignore the traditional rule of patient autonomy and allow the family to terminate a patient's life support. This would be a good result in Cruzan,but would it best serve the needs of future patients and their health care providers?
Saint Leo University Term Paper Requirements
You are required to complete a term paper for this course, in which you will apply the information you have covered throughout the course.
The term paper applies the Morrison and Furlong (2014) Health Care Ethics, Critical Issues for the 21st Century (3rd ed.) textbook to lead through a process of health leadership competency, affective domain of learning, self-reflection, personal assessment, and professional development planning. The term paper is designed to facilitate the student to; comprehend, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create a better understanding of how to apply ethics when emerging ethical dilemmas arise and to articulate professional interests, strengths, and areas for further learning and development in preparation for managing and leading health care organizations in the future.
In preparation for your term paper, research and compare the cases of Quinlan, Cruzan, and Schiavo. During your research, you should read about patient self-determination, right to die, advance care planning, ethical issues in right to die cases, the moral significance of family decision making, and ethical issues concerning physician-assisted suicide. After you have completed these tasks, write a paper on:
Death, Dying, and the Law in America.
What are the ethical dilemmas and legal considerations families and providers will be faced with? Do you think that these ethical dilemmas and legal considerations are more important than they were in the past?
What ethics issues related to death, medicine, and the family decision-making do you think will apply and be present as the patients experience the dying process today?
Your paper must:
be 8-10 pages in length
be double-spaced
use 1 inch margins left, right, top, and bottom
use 12-point Times New Roman font
The cover sheet, table of contents, index, pictures, long quotations, or multiple quotations will not count toward the 8-10 page requirement. APA format is required.
Summarization and/or Conclusions
Write a thoughtful and detailed summarization and/or conclusion of your term paper showing how you compared and integrated the Saint Leo core values of community, integrity, and excellence into the selected topic.
Attachment:- The story of Terri Schiavo.rar