End-of-Life Care

Challenges to Texas laws governing end-of-life care, whether through legislative rewrites or judicial override, are nothing new. The recent success of those challenges is. And these legal shifts raise significant concerns for physicians and their ability to exercise their medical judgment in these difficult situations.

Read the Law story in Texas Medicine.

End-of-Life Care Presents
Legal Hurdles  

TMA, joined by six other state health care organizations, has produced a list of principles to help hospitals and other health care facilities provide more flexible visitation policies for patients facing serious illness or end-of-life situations during the COVID-19 crisis.

As one attack on the state’s medical ethics committee review law ends, another is in progress. Once again, the Texas Medical Association is telling a court medicine backs the law.

When TMA urged members to ask their state senators to vote “no” on a key bill regarding treatment disputes at the end of life, they didn’t hold back. Hundreds of Texas physicians took up the call, using TMA’s Grassroots Action enter to share very personal and passionate messages with their senators.

This publication will help you become familiar with legal forms that relate to your patients’ medical issues, as well as offer you tools to help you broach the sensitive topic of the need for such planning. Advance care planning ensures a patient's living wishes are carried out. It protects them, as well as those who otherwise might be left with the emotional toll of making a life-or-death decision on their behalf.
1 AMA PRA Cat. 1 • 1 ETHICS

TMA provides this ready reference guide for physicians to the key portions of Texas' new DNR law. Tap "Add to Home Screen" on your iPhone or "Add Page Shortcut" on your Android phone to keep this guide readily available.

The patient-physician relationship is unique in modern American life. Patients place their lives in their physicians’ hands. Not only must they trust in their doctors’ knowledge, experience, and skill, but they also must trust that their physician is acting in their best interest — neither motivated nor distracted by competing interests. In return, the physician is responsible for recommending and applying the most appropriate, science-based treatments for the patient’s individual circumstances and medical conditions. All of these pressures are magnified during the often-emotional final days and weeks of a person’s life.