Forgoing Medical Therapy: Pre-Assessment


Forgoing Medical Therapy

  
 

Pre-Assessment

Word document
  1. True or False Questions
  2. Answers


True or False Questions
1. According to the Patient Self-Determination Act, it is illegal to withdraw artificially delivered nutrition and hydration from a patient in a persistent vegetative state.
 
  True   False
2. A competent patient cannot refuse life-sustaining therapies that his or her physicians believe would be of benefit to the patient.
 
  True   False
3. If a patient has not specified a durable power of attorney for health care, the physician can make healthcare decisions for the patient.
 
  True   False
4. Legally and ethically, it is always better to withhold a therapy, (such as mechanical ventilation), rather than try to withdraw it later because it is illegal to stop a therapy that is medically beneficial once it has been started.
 
  True   False
5. There have been many successful legal suits brought by families against physicians for withdrawing life-sustaining therapy from seriously ill patients where the family was initially in favor of withdrawal but later changed their minds after the patient's death.
 
  True   False
6. The Patient Self-Determination Act requires that all patients in healthcare facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding complete an advance directive.
 
  True   False
7. To have a valid advance directive, a lawyer must be consulted.
 
  True   False
8. When a patient has an advance directive for treatment preferences, you can assume that they would not want to have CPR if they should arrest.
 
  True   False
9. A physician who decides to withhold CPR on the basis of futility is legally protected from a wrongful death suit.
 
  True   False
10. Physicians who prescribe excessive doses of morphine for comatose patients in the ICU are guilty of physician-assisted suicide.
 
  True   False
11. Oregon recently legalized mercy killing allowing hospice nurses to help terminal patients who are in pain to die by administering a fatal dose of a medication.
 
  True   False
12. Terminal sedation is currently illegal.
 
  True   False
13. If a dying patient voluntarily stops eating and drinking, the nurse must report their suicidal behavior to the appropriate resource or risk losing their license.
 
  True   False
14. Nurses who provide the telephone number for the Hemlock Society or similar groups are guilty of the felony charge of assisting a suicide.
 
  True   False



 

 

 

Answers

All answers on this quiz are FALSE. The purpose of the quiz is to generate questions and help students to think through the information. Also, the quiz is intended to help students identify areas where they are very certain of their knowledge but their previous information is incorrect. This is the most difficult information to teach in that students tend to not focus on areas where they are confident of their knowledge base.

�2001 D.J. Wilkie & TNEEL Investigators