Indonesia Conference Directory

In medical society, there are controvery issues that called withholding and withdrawing life support. Withholding life support is delaying the provision of new or advanced life support therapy without stopping ongoing life support therapy, and withdrawing life support is stopping some or all of the life support therapy given to patients . This decision was not only decided based on medical aspects but also related to bioethics and medicolegal aspects. For medical practitioners, withholding and withdrawing life support are hard moral dilemmas to be implemented. From the medical aspect, withholding and withdrawing life support is not the same as euthanasia. There is a strong general consensus that withholding and withdrawing life support is a decision that allows the disease to progress naturally. This is not a decision to let the patient die, while euthanasia actively take patients at the end of their lives. In the bioetic aspect, doctors must respect the autonomy of patients and families in deciding the withholding and withdrawing life support. In medicolegal aspects, laws regarding withholding and withdrawing life support are regulated in the regulation of the Minister of Health No. 37 of 2014 chapter III where it is stated that the patients family can ask the doctor to withholding and withdrawing life support or ask to assess the patients condition to withholding and withdrawing life support. If there is a discrepancy between the familys request and the recommendations of the medical and ethical committee team, where the family continues to ask for a withholding and withdrawing life support, legal responsibility is with the family. Thus, according to what is regulated in the medical, bioethical and medicolegal aspects, doctors and ethical committee team cannot refuse requests to withholding and withdrawing life support.