•  109
    The best interests principle is commonly utilized in acute care settings to assist with decision making about life-saving and life-sustaining treatment. This ethical principle demands that the decision maker refers to some conception of quality of life that is relevant to the individual patient. The aim of this article is to describe the factors that are required to be incorporated into an account of quality of life that will provide a morally justifiable basis for making a judgement about the f…Read more
  •  72
    The substituted judgement principle is often recommended as a means of promoting the self-determination of an incompetent individual when proxy decision makers are faced with having to make decisions about health care. This article represents a critical ethical analysis of this decision-making principle and describes practical impediments that serve to undermine its fundamental purpose. These impediments predominantly stem from the informality associated with the application of the substituted j…Read more
  •  68
    The Concept of Futility in Health Care Decision Making
    Nursing Ethics 11 (1): 77-83. 2004.
    Life saving or life sustaining treatment may not be instigated in the clinical setting when such treatment is deemed to be futile and therefore not in the patient’s best interests. The concept of futility, however, is related to many assumptions about quality and quantity of life, and may be relied upon in a manner that is ethically unjustifiable. It is argued that the concept of futility will remain of limited practical use in making decisions based on the best interests principle because it pl…Read more
  •  53
    Reviewers of articles received and published in 2006Á/07
    with Tineke Abma, Anne Arber, Arie van der Arend, Marianne Benedicta Arndt, Robert Arnott, Kim Atkins, Helen Aveyard, Joy Bickley-Asher, and Pamela Bjorklund
    Nursing Ethics 14 (6): 849. 2007.