Setting Limits: How person-centered healthcare can assist clinicians in the allocation of scarce resources

Abstract

Within person-centered healthcare, clinicians often occupy the center of a clinical decision along with the patient. As such, person-centered healthcare must value the clinician as person. Clinicians bring a duty of stewardship, professional values and clinical expertise to medical decisions, aiming to help the patient achieve a medical benefit and to avoid causing undue burden or risk of harm. The clinician is the best position to determine the range of interventions that are medically appropriate in an individual case. At times, patients or their surrogates may request or demand interventions that are not medically appropriate, as they have no meaningful chance of achieving a medical benefit or are likely to cause harm. Respecting clinicians as persons means that they cannot be obligated to provide medically inappropriate interventions, even when requested by patients.