Presenting Faculty
Gregg VandeKieft, MD MA FAAHPM
Session Overview
This session explores the ethical and legal principles that guide clinical decision‑making in serious and complex illness, with emphasis on patient rights, shared decision‑making, and ethically sound care across the illness spectrum.
What Learners Will Gain
Learners will self‑report the ability to apply, analyze, and evaluate ethical and legal aspects of care when making appropriate diagnostic and clinical decisions that have important consequences for patients and families experiencing serious and complex illness.
Ethical Foundations of Care
• Ethics of the physician–patient relationship, including nonabandonment and truth‑telling
• Principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence
• Principle of double effect
Patient Rights and Access to Care
• Patient rights
• Privacy and confidentiality
• Access to care and rationing
• Treatment refusal
• Futility and nonbeneficial treatment
Decision‑Making and Advance Care Planning
• Informed assent and informed consent
• Pediatric decision‑making
• Surrogate decision‑making and best‑interest standards
• Advance care planning
Life‑Sustaining Treatments and End‑of‑Life Ethics
• Withdrawal of life‑sustaining therapies, including ethical and legal standards
• Institutional culture and policy considerations
• Medically assisted nutrition and hydration
• Physician aid in dying
Neurologic and End‑of‑Life Determinations
• Altered states of consciousness, including minimally conscious state, vegetative state, and coma
• Death by neurologic criteria
Clinical Focus Areas
• Navigating ethical complexity and legal obligations in serious illness
• Supporting shared, values‑based decision‑making
• Aligning care plans with patient goals, rights, and best interests