ABSTRACT
For those who lack capacity to make decisions relating to their treatment, clinicians have become accustomed to acting in the patient's best interests. Meetings devoted to this subject are a ubiquitous daily occurrence in hospitals across the country. This will involve consideration of the proposed medical treatment, the prospects of success and outcome. The judgement was centred on the notion that when considering best interests, decision-makers must try to put themselves in the place of the individual patient and ask what her attitude to the proposed treatment is likely to be. Factors that should be taken into account would include the views of those who had a close relationship with the patient when she had capacity and the impact of the patient's fate on those who were closest to her. The court nevertheless made it crystal clear that what the patient would have done in the circumstances would not automatically be regarded as to be in her best interests.
