Medical Futility Law - International Survey

Chad Ball and colleagues recently reported, in JOURNAL OF TRAUMA, on a recent end-of-life survey distributed to over 400 physicians in the United States, Canada, South Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia.  One of the questions was

Does your local government body (country/state/province/county) have a medical futility law stating that if continued care of a given patient is "medically futile," then the clinician may de-escalate care, regardless of what the family member requests?  YES   NO

The authors report that 14-38% of respondents indicated that they "benefit from a medical futility law allowing them to proceed with different end-of-life care than desired by a patient's family."  They also noted that "U.S. clinicians were much more reluctant . . . [which] may result from a complex interaction between the Western hemisphere's heavy emphasis on patient autonomy , litigious concerns, . . . ."