Dietitians' role in decisions to withhold nutrition and hydration

Decisions to limit nutrition and hydration in irreversibly or terminally ill patients are becoming more frequent in both hospitals and home-care settings. Although clear-cut principles or rules are not always possible, appropriate decisions about any form of life-sustaining treatment, nutrition and hydration included, require conducting a productive moral conversation within the medical management team and/or the institutional ethics committee. In this article, we discuss how dietitians can participate in these medical decisions.

Published by Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 1991. The guideline itself is at the source linked here.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1902240/