The Medical Futility Experience of Nurses in Caring for Critically Ill Patients.

Background: Medical futility is a key bioethical concern. In Taiwan, policymakers tend to provide care standards and evaluation guidelines for critically ill and terminal patients whose treatment is medically futile. However, the current status of medical futility for critically ill patients is inadequate, and no consensus currently exists on the definition of medical futility.

[Exploring medical futility].

Although able to extend the life of some critical patients, advanced medical technology is limited in terms of scope and extent of effectiveness. Some patients die despite the best efforts of medical teams. Medical futility describes treatments that are both extremely unlikely to benefit a patient and costly to provide.