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How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

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31–40 of 170 posts

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of an interview with neurosurgeon and author Henry Marsh who had prostate cancer. He described how he's arranged to end his own life should he get alzheimer's or dementia as he didn't want to waste away. But he explained that he has access to knowledge and things ordinary people don't.

I looked into this recently and it seems like it is basically impossible to pre-arrange assisted suicide for alzheimer's or dementia. Even in countries which allow death with dignity. I find it very strange because it’s so common and I’m sure many people would prefer DWD in those circumstances.

To me, it doesn’t seem strange at all because I’m thinking about how complicated the system would have to be to carry out such a directive.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#32
post #2

> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…

If CPR is done right ~10% will walk out of the hospital. But that's a big if! Must be near a trained bystander. AED is much better on shockable rhythms, ~70%. Unfortunately most out-of-hospital cardiac events occur in homes which rarely have access to a device.

In 2021, a drone-delivered AED was used to successfully shock a 71-year-old man back into a stable rhythm in Sweden. The drone delivered the AED in just over three minutes from a 911 call.

Studying years of emergency drone data back up the anecdotes. The AED gets there 10-15 min ahead of medics and boosts survival 70%.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Early" is load-bearing. Even brief delays, just mere minutes, significantly decrease survival or positive outcomes. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.123.010... It's important to get people to realize the benefits of early CPR and more people should be trained on how to do it, or else it won't be prompt and the outcomes will be worse. That's what the Red Cross and AHA promulgate to the public, in…

I've never heard the term "load-bearing" used outside of the civil engineering world until the more recent versions of Claude suddenly decided everything was "load-bearing". Did you internalize Claude terminology, use Claude to write/translate your post, or lead Claude into temptation by being the OG? Asking out of genuine curiosity and not at all trying to throw shade.

"Load bearing beliefs" is a thing in the podcast/YouTube world at a minimum. Perhaps you're not as online as some other folks (probably a good thing!).

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#34
post #2

> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…

> It's a very energetic intensive process, it cracks ribs. I feel like lately this is becoming more common knowledge - but still something most people don't realize. Part of it is probably the fact that it's impossible to depict "real" CPR in popular culture (movies, TV shows, etc) unless the production goes to extreme lengths to use a fake dummy. Even on The Pitt (which seems to make a point of being hyper realistic…

so on Lost when Jack is really upset about Charlie, and he beats the shit out of his lifeless body, ... and it worked, did he do real or fake CPR? These comments make it sound very real.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge unspoken blind spot for a terminal hospice patient. The medicine cabinet just opens up. My dad asked the doctor exactly how much of what he shouldn't take if he didn't want a quick easy death, and the doctor just told him. He didn't end up using it but it was a comfort to him.

The amount of morphine available to the patients on hospice that I have known has made it very clear what the actual intent of those scripts is. Granted, my sample size of 6 isn't great, and 3 were in terrible pain so it made sense for them, but they had ALL the opiates. . . One had liquid injectable morphine in case he couldn't swallow. He had no issues with swallowing and wasn't in pain. I wanted to ask the doctor…

Open secret.

Cowardice of the system, society, that doesn’t allow practitioners to discuss this.

Leads to scary grey areas, actually.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Early" is load-bearing. Even brief delays, just mere minutes, significantly decrease survival or positive outcomes. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.123.010... It's important to get people to realize the benefits of early CPR and more people should be trained on how to do it, or else it won't be prompt and the outcomes will be worse. That's what the Red Cross and AHA promulgate to the public, in…

I've never heard the term "load-bearing" used outside of the civil engineering world until the more recent versions of Claude suddenly decided everything was "load-bearing". Did you internalize Claude terminology, use Claude to write/translate your post, or lead Claude into temptation by being the OG? Asking out of genuine curiosity and not at all trying to throw shade.

I have heard it in the way that Claude uses it going way back. Since I have to use Anthropic models for work, and they use that term prodigiously, it's been added to the list of "perfectly fine phrases that have been ruined" to me. It's really frustrating too because I don't know what other phrase I would use.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#37
post #2

> Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. I’ve had hundreds of people brought to me in the emergency room after getting CPR. Exactly one, a healthy man who’d had no heart troubles (for those who want specifics, he had a ‘tension pneumothorax’), walked out of the hospital. This point has been made by many medically trained people over decades. It's a very energetic…

MY ex-wife who was a CNA had made it a point to me that she had a DNR. How or where, she never told me. Probably for the best.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#38
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally misleading. Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor. Overly aggressive resuscitation attempts are definitely a problem but context matters

> Early CPR (+AED if available) absolutely saves lives. Article is from 2011 by a family med doctor. You have to provide a denominator to make this statement. 30-day survival for out-of-hospital CPR is 10%, and discharge from the hospital (let alone functional status) is even lower. CPR is thus a great example of the OP's thesis that doctors refuse certain things based on their poor efficacy. https://www.redcross.org…

Did you read what you linked? It's not a study of the effects of cpr, it's a list of facts about cardiac arrest that occurs outside a hospital. It explicitly says cpr is life saving:

>Survival chances decrease by 10% for every minute that immediate CPR and use of an AED is delayed.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#39
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a huge unspoken blind spot for a terminal hospice patient. The medicine cabinet just opens up. My dad asked the doctor exactly how much of what he shouldn't take if he didn't want a quick easy death, and the doctor just told him. He didn't end up using it but it was a comfort to him.

The amount of morphine available to the patients on hospice that I have known has made it very clear what the actual intent of those scripts is. Granted, my sample size of 6 isn't great, and 3 were in terrible pain so it made sense for them, but they had ALL the opiates. . . One had liquid injectable morphine in case he couldn't swallow. He had no issues with swallowing and wasn't in pain. I wanted to ask the doctor…

Amazing how frequently people die after they’re turned over right when the family is all together.

Amazing and appreciated.

Re: How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

#40
post #4

> Even when the right preparations have been made, the system can still swallow people up. One of my patients was a man named Jack... He explained to me that he never, under any circumstances, wanted to be placed on life support machines again. > Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to…

[flagged]

Your statement is confusing. Please explain.

DNR means let me die and do not intervene in that process. Which is what hospitals would want if they were secretly killing people to harvest organs, right?

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