Dax Cowart Case Summary

The ability for a patient to deny life saving medical treatment relies on two necessary conditions being meet. Firstly, the patient must be competent. Secondly, a paternalistic model cannot be used for the patient’s treatment. This places almost all of the power of decision away from the patient, thus limiting the right of patient autonomy. If the necessary conditions are met, the sufficient conditions of patient’s refusal of life saving treatments must be an impairment of their quality of life along with expressing a desire to deny treatment. When these conditions are fulfilled, a patient is within their rights to refuse live saving medical treatment. The case of Dax Cowart reflects why these conditions are needed for morally just refusal of treatment. Competency, in the medical sense, is a way for health care providers to determine if the state of patients can make important decisions (Buchanan & Brock, 333). An established competency allows patient’s to preserve their rights to make certain decisions concerning their care. Though, competency is not a fixed concept but heavily relies on the situation the patient is in (Buchanan & Brock, 333). For example, an individual can be component to buy groceries but incompetent to engineer a building. If a patient is not deemed competent it is then insufficient for the patient to have total autonomy over
Doing so infringes on the rights to decide as a competent individual, and starts to develop into a paternalistic model of care. A paternalistic model is insufficient when dealing with competent patients as it encroaches on patient’s right of autonomy and limits decision-making. Additionally, the doctor will likely not truly understand the values of the patient. Therefore, the choices of treatment will likely not match up with the overall interest of the patient (Goldman,