| Summary: | 碩士 === 南華大學 === 生死學研究所 === 91 === The emphasis of the thesis is to probe into the right of the severely-illed patients to refuse life-sustaining treatments. The author tempts to understand, through the viewpoint of legislation, the patients’ right and its ambit concerning life-sustaining treatments and, therefore, to obtain the right of self-determination especially for the severely-illed patients. Under the protection of legislation, human dignity could be respected, and these people could die naturally with life’s quality.
The first chapter talks about the motives and method of writing the thesis and illustrates the arrangement of ideas and the logic of the study. To avoid the misunderstanding that the thesis is about Euthanasia or including the issues of Euthanasia, the second chapter clarifies the concepts and makes a simple definition of the study. Further, to show the importance of the issue more clearly, it also generalizes and introduces the development and background of the issue and illustrates what benefits we can get by paying attention to the right of the patient to refuse life-sustaining treatments.
The third chapter is to understand the basis of patients’ right to refuse life-sustaining treatments by researching into the origin of the right. And the result is that the right is not originated from the hospice regulation but according to the Constitution which claims human dignity and the right of self-determination, and it also according to the common law which claims the right to be free from assault and battery and the principals of informed-consent and physician-patient relationship. To avoid that the right to refuse life-sustaining treatments is repressed because of the protection of other rights and to prevent the right from being abused, this chapter also puts forward the way to compromise when the different rights are in conflict.
The forth chapter talks about the specific problems including the qualified patients, the ambit of medical treatments, the decision-making capacity of the patients, and the limitation of the power of attorney. The author goes deep into the problems that the patients may encounter if they refuse life-sustaining treatments, such as making decisions for the patient, the standard of restricting medical treatments…etc. The author also tries to find out the standard ways to resolve these problems from the examples and practice of American legislation.
The fifth chapter is the summary of the foregoing chapters. There also includes the reviews and suggestions to the current legislation, hoping that the legislation amendment in the future could make the laws much more mature and give patients complete protection.
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