November 18, 2026 Webinar Information

Refusal, Capacity, and Care: The Ethics of Overriding Patient Treatment Decisions

Webinar Description

Balancing patient autonomy against beneficence and nonmaleficence when     evaluating decision-making capacity in a patient who refuses critical treatment and wants to be discharged against medical advice.

Panelists

Stacie Honaker, Esq., the Risk Manager and Privacy Officer for the WVU Health Sciences Center and ex-officio member of the WVNEC Advisory Committee; Daniel Miller, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, West Virginia University; Alvin H. Moss, MD, Professor of Medicine, West Virginia University School of Medicine, and Executive Director of WVNEC; and Eric Zimmerman, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry, Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, West Virginia University School of Medicine.

Learning Objectives

At the conclusion of the session, participants should be able to:

• Describe the abilities needed for decision-making capacity and how to assess it;
• Discuss the elements of valid informed consent;
• Analyze when it is ethically justified to override a patient’s treatment refusal; and
• Explain the circumstances appropriate for a patient-directed discharge (previously called a discharge against medical advice or AMA discharge).