title: Medical treatment for the terminally ill: the 'risk of unacceptable badness'.
abstract: When patients or their families rarely request inappropriate end of life care in the ICU for capricious reasons. End of life treatment decisions that only prolong discomfort and death are usually emotional and based on unrealistic expectations. I explore some of those reasons in this paper.
authors.affiliation: Neurovascular ICU, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. crippen@pitt.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Crippen
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D018447:Medical Futility; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000941:ethics*; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013727:Terminal Care / Q000941:ethics* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014481:United States