Australian Medical Association Position Statement on Medical Futility

Earlier this month, the Australian Medical Association released a new "Position Statement on End of Life Care and Advance Care Planning 2014." The statement outlines policy on issues such as medical futility, decision making capacity, advance care planning, artificial nutrition and hydration, bereavement, workforce, and community awareness.



Futile Treatment is defined as "Treatment that no longer provides a benefit to a patient or treatment where the burdens of treatment outweigh the benefits. Doctors are not required to offer treatment options they consider neither medically beneficial nor clinically appropriate."



Here are the three sections on medical futility:



"7.1  Doctors should understand the limits of medicine in prolonging life and recognise when efforts to prolong life may not benefit the patient. In end of life care, medically futile treatment can be considered to be treatment that gives no, or an extremely small, chance of meaningful prolongation of survival and, at best, can only briefly delay the inevitable death of the patient."



"7.2  Whilst doctors are generally not obliged to provide treatments that are considered medically futile, where possible it is important that the doctor discuss their reasons for determining a treatment to be medically futile with the patient (and/or the SDM, carers, family members) before deciding the treatment should not be offered."


"7.3  In some cases, a treatment may not offer a benefit in terms of curing a patient’s condition, or significantly extending life or improving quality of life, but it may benefit the patient in other ways. For example, a ‘medically futile’ treatment may briefly extend the life of the patient so he or she can achieve their wish of saying goodbye to a relative who is arriving shortly from overseas."