Patients often face decisions on whether or not to put themselves through medical treatment. A recommended treatment might only provide comfort or it may speed healing. It can be a question of quality of life versus quantity of life. How can you understand your rights to refuse a medical treatment recommended by your doctor?﻿﻿

There are four goals of medical treatment—preventive, curative, management, and palliative.﻿﻿ When you are asked to decide whether to be treated or to choose from among several treatment options, you are choosing what you consider to be the best outcome from among those choices.

Unfortunately, sometimes the choices you have won't yield the outcomes you prefer. Whether you have the right to refuse care depends on the patient's circumstances and the reasons why you choose to refuse care.﻿﻿