Joel Wu, JD, MPH, MA
Clinical Ethics Assistant Professor
University of Minnesota
Abstract: Conflicts between ethical commitments to respect patient autonomy and to prevent avoidable harms to patients arise when patients try to leave the hospital before it is safe to leave. On one hand, involuntary hospitalization is a serious intrusion on individual liberty, and the methods to keep a patient involuntarily hospitalized may be coercive and harmful on their own. On the other hand, allowing patients with impairments in decision-making capacity to leave when it is medically unsafe can lead to avoidable and sometimes serious harms that may not only be harmful to the patient’s health, but also adverse to their own true goals and values. This session addresses the ethical considerations and procedures for evaluating when a discharge against medical advice (an AMA discharge) is ethically appropriate, or when involuntary hospitalization is ethically appropriate.
Sponsored by the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics
Location and Address
Online