How doctors choose to die (2012)
theguardian.com
How doctors choose to die (2012)
1–10 of 90 posts
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#2This has been posted a number of times in different iterations on HN. I'm curious why the user group here has such a fascination with medical doctors.
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#3A few years ago, I heard an NPR interview with a doctor who's friend was
terminally ill. Rather than opt for treatment, the friend spent his remaining
time living with his doctor friend. He died a few months later. The doctor
said that this is how she wanted to die, too. I've tried a
number of times to find the story, but I haven't been able to. Does it ring a
bell for anyone? I'd love to listen to it again.
Thanks!
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#4This has been posted a number of times in different iterations on HN. I'm curious why the user group here has such a fascination with medical doctors.
It has nothing to do with a fascination with doctors and everything to do with a fascination with death. Death today in first world countries is so far removed from what death ought to be, that it's almost unrecognizable. Dying in a sterile white room, in a building that houses thousands of sick people, with bad food, busy nurses, and often alone, is what I'd imagine a dystopian future from a Hollywood movie like Soylent Green would look like, but instead it's what Death looks like today. There is no need for this, and if most of us were asked in advance, few would choose it as the outcome. Yet very few people have living wills created, nor plans communicated with close family for these circumstances.
You can't avoid Death, it happens to everyone. So it's bizarre why so few people plan for the only truly predictable event in their entire life.
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#5Can't speak for other people, but the fascination for me is
a combination of decisions that are difficult and universal and then watching to see how subject matter experts (who view this stuff on a day to day basis) choose for themselves.
I think this invariably results in deeply moving meditations on mortality and dignity from both sides of the table (care provider and patient). Or maybe I'm just suffering a recency bias from this: http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/stanford-neuro...
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#6This has been posted a number of times in different iterations on HN. I'm curious why the user group here has such a fascination with medical doctors.
Engineers have a peculiar relationship with doctors. When they have need of one, and the doctor decides on a treatment plan for them, they think about the complexity of the problem space the doctor had to navigate to reach that decision. They wish the doctor would chart the parameter space for them, so they can agree or disagree with the choice in an informed manner, and have more of a clue about the competence of the doctor. This is usually not what happens, not to their satisfaction anyway, and it's deeply unsettling having to trust rather than know when it comes to something that appears so much like engineering on the surface.
An alternative title for this article might be "what doctors really think", and thus strikes to the heart of this issue.
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#7I thought this was thoughtful and well written but all I see is anecdote...there is no data presented that MDs choose different options than non-MD patients.
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#8I thought this was thoughtful and well written but all I see is anecdote...there is no data presented that MDs choose different options than non-MD patients.
Adding to the anecdote, I'm a paramedic who has also opted for 'no heroic measures'. Even with CPR survival rates in this county being amongst the highest in the country.
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#9I thought this was thoughtful and well written but all I see is anecdote...there is no data presented that MDs choose different options than non-MD patients.
Do you have data disproving the anecdotes?
Re: How doctors choose to die (2012)
#10This has been posted a number of times in different iterations on HN. I'm curious why the user group here has such a fascination with medical doctors.
I can only say why I shared it here:
I thought it would be of interest to hackers. That's what these doctors are doing...hacking the end of life.