The Patient's Rejection of Treatment and the Doctor's Responsibility.

Yi, Sang Don

Original article

Korean Journal of Legal Medicine 1998;22(2):95-99.
Published online October 31, 1998.

The Patient's Rejection of Treatment and the Doctor's Responsibility.

Sang Don Yi

College of Law, Korea University, Korea.

Abstract

The intercourse for mutual understanding between the doctor and the patient is an essential factor of successful medical treatment. The law should confine its duties to forming conditions where the remedial discourse can be held freely and peacefully. Under the Art. 16 of the medical law, however, the structure of free remedial discourse is distorted by asymmetrically distributing the rights and obligations between the doctor and the patient.; The doctor's responsibility to treat the patient ends as soon as the recipient decides to terminate it on his or her own volition. In the case of patients requiring immediate attention the doctor and the patient should discuss the matters of the medical, ethical and political aspects of the termination of treatment with religious men or women etc. If the above mentioned is properly carried out, any decision is fully legitimated regardless of the its content.