Health facilities' obligations when a patient refuses treatment

Recent cases involving the decisions of Elizabeth Bouvia and G. Ross Henninger to starve themselves to death highlight the ethical obligations of patients, health care facilities, and the courts. When a patient seeks the hospital's cooperation in his or her attempt to commit suicide, society's responsibility is not merely to restrain the patient from suicide but to offer physical care, financial aid, and personal support. The hospital's duty is to intervene, and the court's responsibility is to allow such intervention. The most compassionate way in which the hospital can help is to force-feed the patient. If a patient is mentally competent, the refusal to eat is morally wrong. The patient is morally not permitted to commit suicide, though the avoidance of treatment may be justified in cases when force-feeding would be considered an extraordinary means, because of the patient's age or physical condition, for example. If a patient is incompetent, the refusal to eat is not a fully rational act; for the hospital to refrain from force-feeding would not be considered cooperation in suicide, since the incompetent patient cannot commit suicide. To avoid court rulings that order compliance with a patient's wishes, health care facilities in the future may have to require patients or their families to agree in writing to treatment by ordinary means.