Complex Decisions.

Essays and articles in the November-December 2022 issue of the Hastings Center Report explore the complexities of medical decision-making. A case-study essay, for example, argues that the dismaying decision to perform resuscitation efforts on a patient who had obviously been dead for some time can be understood in the context of the harmful practice of defensive medicine. A narrative essay concerns whether an adolescent with locked-in syndrome should be asked her wishes about life-sustaining interventions, and the articles illuminate the ethical value of the parental role in pediatric decision-making, an array of ways in which patient decision-making is interdependent, and the limitations of measures designed to evaluate the quality of a patient's decision and decision-making process.