South Australian Current Acts

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CONSENT TO MEDICAL TREATMENT AND PALLIATIVE CARE ACT 1995 - SECT 17

17—The care of people who are dying

        (1)         A medical practitioner responsible for the treatment or care of a patient in the terminal phase of a terminal illness, or a person participating in the treatment or care of the patient under the medical practitioner's supervision, incurs no civil or criminal liability by administering medical treatment with the intention of relieving pain or distress—

            (a)         with the consent of the patient or the patient's representative; and

            (b)         in good faith and without negligence; and

            (c)         in accordance with proper professional standards of palliative care,

even though an incidental effect of the treatment is to hasten the death of the patient.

        (2)         A medical practitioner responsible for the treatment or care of a patient in the terminal phase of a terminal illness, or a person participating in the treatment or care of the patient under the medical practitioner's supervision—

            (a)         is under no duty to use, or to continue to use, life sustaining measures in treating the patient if the effect of doing so would be merely to prolong life in a moribund state without any real prospect of recovery or in a persistent vegetative state (whether or not the patient or the patient's representative has requested that such measures be used or continued); and

            (b)         must, if the patient or the patient's representative so directs, withdraw life sustaining measures from the patient.

        (3)         For the purposes of the law of the State—

            (a)         the administration of medical treatment for the relief of pain or distress in accordance with subsection (1) does not constitute an intervening cause 1 of death; and

            (b)         the non-application or discontinuance of life sustaining measures in accordance with subsection (2) does not constitute an intervening cause 1 of death.

Note—

1         A novus actus interveniens ie a cause that breaks a pre-existing chain of causation.



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