In “How Doctors Die,” Dr. Ken Murray explains some different real stories about people having terminal diseases, and how their doctors and physicians treat them. Moreover, the author mentions about difficult decisions that not only the doctors but patients and the patients’ family also have to choose. When the patients’ diseases become critical, the doctors have to do whatever they can to help the patients, such as surgical treatment, chemotherapy, or radiation, but they cannot help the patients in some cases. In additions, doctors still die by critical diseases, too. Although they are doctors, they are just normal people and cannot resist all of the diseases. Like other patients, the doctors having critical diseases want to live instead of …show more content…
Almost doctors and physicians in the world have worked at a hospital, so they must know many patients’ circumstances. They have to do many medical treatments when the patients come to the emergency room. It looks like horror films with many torture scenes, and the patients have to pay for their pains. The doctors have to give the decisions for every circumstance, so they are very stressful. They just want to die instead of suffering those medical treatments. In that time, the patients’ family just believes in the doctors and tells them to do whatever they can, but the doctors just do something that 's possible. Almost patients have died after that expensive medical treatments, but the doctors still do those medical procedures. That doctors did not have enough confidence to tell the truth to the patients’ families. Other doctors have more confidence, so they explain the health condition to the patients’ families. One time, the author could not save his patient, and the patient had found another doctor to help her. That doctor decided to cut her legs, but the patient still died in fourteen days …show more content…
All creatures on earth just want to live very long, and the human has more avid than any other creature on our planet. The patients having critical diseases want to prolong their lives, so they want to believe in doctors and modern medical system. I believe that they want to live because they still have a lot of things that they have to do, or they don’t want to make their family feel upset when they pass away. Moreover, their family have too many expectations of the medical treatments and the doctors, but the results are always negative. My close friend’s family is an example. When his grandmother’s diabetes was in the last period, she had to get some surgeries because her feet were gangrenous. After that surgeries, she told she feels very painful and just wants to die, but she does not want to make her family feel bad. Therefore, she had suffered her painful with an expectation prolonging her life on a hospital bed. Many people nearing the end of their lives have to suffer many medical treatments looking like a mortification. “Many people think of CPR as a reliable life save when, in face, the results are usually poor,” written by the author, has demonstrated for that examples. In addition, the doctors are the second factor that affects to the decision using medical treatments. All of the doctors just want to try their best to cure the patients, and they want to help the
Truth in medicine is a big discussion among many medical professionals about how doctors handle the truth. Truth to a patient can be presented in many ways and different doctors have different ways of handling it. Many often believe that patient’s being fully aware of their health; such as a bad diagnosis, could lead to depression compared to not knowing the diagnosis. In today’s society doctor’s are expected to deliver patient’s the whole truth in order for patients to actively make their own health decisions. Shelly K. Schwartz discusses the truth in her essay, Is It Ever Ok to Lie to Patients?. Schwartz argument is that patients should be told the truth about their health and presented and addressed in a way most comfortable to the patient.
When making decisions regarding treatment of another person, it is important to respect the expressed wishes of the individual. John says that his mother would want to live as long as she could, but questions arise related to her quality of life and perception of prolonged suffering by prolonging the dying process. The book states that quality of life changes throughout one’s life and experiences.
The Dying of the Light is an article by Dr. Craig Bowron that captures the controversy surrounding the role of medication in prolonging life. The author describes that many medical advancements have become a burden to particularly elderly patients who in most instances are ready to embrace the reality of death. Dr. Bowron believes that dying in these modern times has become a tiring and unnatural process. “Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is most of us will die in pieces,” Bowron notes (Bowron). The article does not advocate for euthanasia or the management of health care costs due to terminal or chronic illness. Bowron faults humanity for not embracing life and death with dignity as it was in the past. He blames the emergence of modern medical advances and democracy as the sole reason why everyone is pursuing immortality or prolonging of life rather than embracing the natural course of things. The article is very articulate and comes out rather persuasive to its target audience that happens to be health-conscious. Craig Bowron uses effective rhetorical strategies such as logos, ethos, and pathos to pass on his message. The article’s credibility is impeccable due to the author’s authority in health matters as he is a hospital-based internist. A better placed individual to dissect this issue by analyzing his experiences in the healthcare profession. The article incorporates a passionate delivery that appeals to the readers’ hopes, opinions, and imagination.
Anyone can be diagnosed with a terminal illness. It doesn’t matter how healthy you are, who you are, or what you do. Some terminal illnesses you can prevent by avoiding unhealthy habits, eating healthily, exercising regularly and keeping up with vaccinations. However some terminally ill people cannot be helped, their diseases cannot be cured and the only thing possible to help them, besides providing pain relieving medication, is to make them as comfortable as possible while enduring their condition. Many times the pharmaceuticals do not provide the desired pain escape, and cause patients to seek immediate relief in methods such as euthanasia. Euthanasia is the practice of deliberately ending a life in order to alleviate pain and suffering, but is deemed controversial because many various religions believe that their creators are the only ones that should decide when their life’s journey should reach its end. Euthanasia is performed by medical doctors or physicians and is the administration of a fatal dose of a suitable drug to the patient on his or her express request. Although the majority of American states oppose euthanasia, the practice would result in more good as opposed to harm. The patient who is receiving the euthanizing medication would be able to proactively choose their pursuit of happiness, alleviate themselves from all of the built up pain and suffering, relieve the burden they may feel they are upon their family, and die with dignity, which is the most ethical option for vegetative state and terminally ill patients. Euthanasia should remain an alternative to living a slow and painful life for those who are terminally ill, in a vegetative state or would like to end their life with dignity. In addition, t...
The PBS Frontline documentary Being Mortal focuses on doctors and their patients who are dealing with chronic illness and nearing the end of their life. It investigates how some doctors are ill-equipped to talk about chronic illness and death with their patients and how this can lead to a lesser quality of life at the end of life stage for patients. In this documentary, we followed Dr. Atul Gawade on his journey to educate himself and others about the difficult emotional aspects of dying. The director, Thomas Jennings, along with Dr. Gawade, created a fantastic documentary about how it is important for doctors to talk to dying patients about their mortality. This was effectively done by offering experiences and interviews from doctors and their patients, by following the declining path of the patient, and by showing the real life emotion of the patients, families and doctors working through to the end.
“In quixotically trying to conquer death doctors all too frequently do no good for their patients’ “ease” but at the same time they do harm instead by prolonguing and even magnifying patients’ dis-ease.”
This internal conflict is a result of the mistakes a physician makes, and the ability to move on from it is regarded as almost unreachable. For example, in the essay, “When Doctors Make Mistakes”, Gawande is standing over his patient Louise Williams, viewing her “lips blue, her throat swollen, bloody, and suddenly closed passage” (73). The imagery of the patient’s lifeless body gives a larger meaning to the doctor’s daily preoccupations. Gawande’s use of morbid language helps the reader identify that death is, unfortunately, a facet of a physician’s career. However, Gawande does not leave the reader to ponder of what emotions went through him after witnessing the loss of his patient. He writes, “Perhaps a backup suction device should always be at hand, and better light more easily available. Perhaps the institutions could have trained me better for such crises” (“When Doctors Make Mistakes” 73). The repetition of “perhaps” only epitomizes the inability to move on from making a mistake. However, this repetitive language also demonstrates the ends a doctor will meet to save a patient’s life (73). Therefore, it is not the doctor, but medicine itself that can be seen as the gateway from life to death or vice versa. Although the limitations of medicine can allow for the death of a patient to occur, a doctor will still experience emotional turmoil after losing someone he was trying to
For countless years there has always been an urgent need for doctors. Different methods would be used to cure people from their sicknesses. However, life is given by God and it is he who can take it away. Doctors play the role of saving lives, but in the end, they are powerless because nature has to take its course leaving humanity at its limits. In Vincent Lams novel “Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures”, Lam challenges the myth that doctors are omnipotent by contending that “medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability”. Using Fitzgerald as a focal point, Lam debunks the myth that doctors are omnipotent through situations of medical failure, having a loss of power and control and by inhabiting deadly diseases. By showings his mistakes, Lam proves that Fitz is not perfect and God like.
Increasingly, people know from their own experience some painful dilemmas involving elderly or handicapped individuals who are in pain. While the achievements of modern medicine have been used to prolong and enhance life for many, they have also helped create an often dreaded context for dying. Costly technology may keep persons alive, but frequently these persons are cut off from meaningful relationships with others and exist with little or no hope for recovery. Many fearfully imagine a situation at the end of their lives where they or their trusted ones will have no say in decisions about their treatment.
Doctors are well respected within the realm of American society and are perceived with the highest regard as a profession. According to Gallup’s Honesty and Ethics in Profession polls, 67% of respondents believe that “the honesty and ethical standards” of medical doctors were “very high.” Furthermore, 88% of respondents polled by Harris Polls considered doctors to either “hold some” or a “great deal of prestige”. Consequently, these overwhelmingly positive views of the medical profession insinuate a myth of infallibility that envelops the physicians and the science they practice. Atul Gawande, in Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science, provides an extensive view of the medical profession from both sides of the operating table
With the technology and advancements in medicine today, who is to say that a person's illness couldn't be cured within the next few months? Why should a person have to make the choice of ending his or her life if (s)he is unsure about a cure? How can someone else know if another person is really experiencing unbearable pain and suffering? Who gets to be the person who tells another that his or her life isn't worth living?
… The doctors present agreed that there is no objective way of measuring or judging the claims of patients that their suffering is unbearable. And if it is difficult to measure suffering, how much more difficult to determine the value of a patient's statement that her life is not worth living?
The debate over whose decision it is to uphold a human life is one with a vast range of opinions. Some believe it should be up to God, whereas others assert that it is the right of an individual; however, the ultimate verdict rests in the hands of the government. When tragedy leaves a victim in critical condition with no assurance of recovery, circumstances do not allow for a straightforward action plan. In any state of affairs, it is optimal to continue the life of a patient, even if it seems as though the ideal solution is death. Medical practitioners, relatives, and patients themselves do not deserve the pressure to decide this grave fate. The choice between life and death should not exist. Every human is entitled to the right to live, and
The subject of death and dying is a common occurrence in the health care field. There are many factors involved in the care of a dying patient and various phases the patient, loved ones and even the healthcare professional may go through. There are many controversies in health care related to death, however much of it roots from peoples’ attitudes towards it. Everyone handles death differently; each person has a right to their own opinions and coping mechanisms. Health care professionals are very important during death related situations; as they are a great source of support for a patient and their loved ones. It is essential that health care professionals give ethical, legal and honest care to their patients, regardless of the situation.
In Ken Murray's essay, "How Doctors Die", the author discusses and informs the reader about how the seemingly unusual way doctors spend the last few months or so of their lives compared to the rest of America. Murray informs the reader about how truly different they handle the situation. ”What’s unusual about them (doctors) is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little.” This just shows how most people, when they find out they have a life threatening illness or disorder, will ask for whatever is possible to be done so that they may live. But for when doctors in most cases first learn of a life threatening issue they have, they just accept it. They do not ask for the most extreme measures to be taken,