-
- Mary Whitmer, Susan Hurst, Marilynn Prins, Kelli Shepard, and Doris McVey.
- Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center, Phoenix, AZ 85006, USA.
- Dimens Crit Care Nurs. 2009 Mar 1;28(2):67-71.
AbstractMedical futility is a concept commonly used to describe medical therapy that has no known or anticipated immediate or long-term benefit for a patient. The concept of futility has existed since the time of Hippocrates and has become the predominant dilemma for many end-of-life situations. Today, clinicians grapple with ethical conflicts and concepts in their daily practice. Many healthcare providers use the concept of medical futility when they are talking with patients and families who are in a quandary about their loved one's care. This article provides an overview of medical futility.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*,_underline_or**bold**. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>and subscript<sub>text</sub>. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3., hyphens-or asterisks*. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com) - Images can be included with:
 - For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote..