Addressing Futility: A Practical Approach.

ABSTRACT: Limiting or withdrawing nonbeneficial medical care is considered ethically responsible throughout most of critical care and medical ethics literature. Practically, however, setting limits to treatment is often challenging. We review the literature to identify best practices for using the definition of futility as an anchoring concept to aid the ethical practice of ICU clinicians.

Data sources

Source data were obtained from a PubMed literature review.

Study selection

English language articles were chosen based on relevance to medical futility ethics, end-of-life care in the ICU, or communication and conflict mitigation strategies.

Data extraction

Independent evaluation of selected articles for recurrent content themes as relevant to our clinical case were compared among

SUBMITTER: Kopar PK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9257305 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature