Elder Law – The Line That Separates Palliative Care from Criminal Actions

Palliative care focuses on alleviating pain and suffering brought about by the symptoms of diseases

, rather than on curing the disease itself. However, in instances where a diseases may be curable, palliative care is often employed in conjunction with other treatments.

The main issue that arises from palliative care is when the opinion of medical professionals differ greatly from what a patient's family believes to be appropriate. This is especially true when a family wants the patient to undergo more medical treatment even if the patient is ineligible for such. Moreover, the situation gets worse when the patients enters a state of emergency where the doctor would have to override some family wishes in order to save a life.

For example, an elderly person got into an accident at home. The elderly person fell off of the stairs which resulted in numerous skin lacerations and broken bones. Furthermore, head trauma was present, thereby making it mandatory to maintain the elderly person's consciousness to lessen the risk of coma.

The patient was sent to the emergency room almost dead, and the doctor knows that he has less than ten seconds to make a decision or else the patient may die or suffer irreparable neural damage. Thus, the doctor decided to administer a dangerous drug X in order to relieve the intense pain that the patient is feeling, just so that the patient will not faint and go in a state of coma. However it was found out that this move caused massive side effects on the patient, causes the elderly patient to die right away.

This sounds like medical malpractice at first glance. However, for something to be a criminal act, two elements must be present: malicious intent and recklessness on the doctor's part.

However, these two things are not present in such a scenario. Malice was not there because there is no legitimate motive to begin with the doctor had all the intention to heal the patient. Second, recklessness was not there too, because the doctor just had to make a split second decision with scant information because of the urgency of the situation.

However, this is something that we, average person, do not know. Hence, there have been many lawsuits which turn out to be a sheer waste of time.

Elder Law The Line That Separates Palliative Care from Criminal Actions

By: Sammi Jonesman

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