Extremis The documentary Extremis by Dan Krauss was very interesting to me since I am working towards a degree in healthcare. With the setting being in the intensive care unit of a hospital the patients are very near death. Two doctors are working with the patients who are mainly filmed who are Donna and Selena. Donna is on life support with a breathing tube, but is partially breathing on her own and is able to communicate. Selena is fully on life support and is not able to communicate. The doctors are struggling to make the right decisions to keep the families of the patients happy and the patient comfortable. After watching the documentary, you can really notice the forms of tragedy, synesthesia, and bildungsroman in the film taking …show more content…
Having to make life or death decisions is very stressful as you would see in the film. Also making the decision for your loved one you have to realize, you are not the patient. You may or may not know what the person’s decision would be to live off a machine or not. When you have to some to a situation like that look at the facts, their health and their life expectancy if a certain treatment is done. It’s hard for families to understand that because they do not want to lose their loved one, they would rather them be on a machine like a vegetable to keep them alive. They may not know that person is suffering. It is time to let them pass naturally and comfortably surrounded by their family with the best medical treatment possible that has been given to them. After watching the documentary, you can really notice the forms of tragedy, synesthesia, and bildungsroman in the film taking place in the lives of the patients and the medical specialist. I enjoyed watching the documentary because I have been in both the patients and family’s situation before. Having to put all your trust into someone for them to make the best medical treatment option for you is very upsetting, especially if they choose the wrong option. Being in the family’s situation it is stressful not knowing what that patient wants, instead you choose what you want for them. But in my opinion is what the doctors can do based on your health is the
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
The movie I was assigned was, In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. This film took place during the late 1960’s in Mississippi, where Virgil Tibbs, a black Philadelphia homicide detective, is traveling. Upon his travel, he unintentionally gets involved in a murder investigation of a business man. He was first accused of committing this murder when a police officer became suspicious of him. After they determined his innocence’s, he was then asked to help solve the case because of his vast knowledge and experience dealing with homicide crimes. He eventually agreed to help because he knew it was the right thing to do. The process for finding the killer was determined to be difficult, but even more so when Tibbs’s efforts
Terminally ill patients deserve the right to have a dignified death. These patients should not be forced to suffer and be in agony their lasting days. The terminally ill should have this choice, because it is the only way to end their excruciating pain. These patients don’t have
The director then touched on the end of life personal preparations of the patient. Through the interviews, music and locations, he managed to share the sadness and peace that the patients and families were experiencing. The documentary also reflected on how difficult it was for the doctors to come to terms with their patient being at the end of their life and the failure they felt in not being able to help them further. In doing this the director helped the viewer understand how important it is for us to understand our mortality and be prepared to answer our important questions earlier rather than
Ken Berger believes that Life Support for elderly patient isn’t benefiting them and is actually causing more harm to them. According to the “Dying on life support: is it fair? Article The Author Dr. Berger states in most cases when the end is near should doctors prolong life artificially? Dr. Berger the medical doctor at the Bellevue Hospital in New York City states how patients that are on life support in the intensive care unit are not showing signs of likelihood of surviving. A very well-known patients of Dr. Berger who is severely ill and he isn’t showing any signs of getting better but actually is showing signs of his body getting ill (Leung n.p). By law Dr. Berger must keep him alive which, he isn’t very pleased about it because he finds it very useful for the staff and also for the
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.
In A Tender Hand in the Presence of Death, Heather, the nurse, would put in IVs and feeding tubes in hopes of prolonging hospice care even when they were ineffective in order to give more time to the families who were having trouble letting go (MacFarquhar, 2016). In my personal situation, I can relate, as two of my grandparents have passed away from cancer and suffered for a long time before passing. Although it was incredibly sad and our families bargained for more time, there was some peace in knowing that the suffering had come to an end once they passed. For our own selfish reasons, we want as much time as possible with our loved ones who are suffering and close to death, but in reality, the decision for assisted suicide should only concern the individual whose life it
In the film Babies there are four babies from four different cultural backgrounds, languages and socioeconomic statuses. While each babies’ development is different, they have one thing in common, they nurtured by those around them. The first baby is Ponijao who is the youngest of nine children from the village of Namibia, South Africa; baby Baya from Mongolia, East Asia; Hattie Bradshaw from San Francisco, California in the United States, and Mari from Tokyo, Japan.
This freedom of choice, Gawande states, ultimately places a burden on either the doctor or the patient as the patient ultimately choose a course of treatment that is ultimately detrimental as in the case of Lazaroff, a patient with only a few weeks to live, but rather insist on “the day he would go back to work.” Despite the terrible risks and the limited potential benefits the neurosurgeon described, Lazaroff continued to opt to surgery and eventually died painfully as a result of surgery. Gawande suggests that Lazaroff “chose badly because his choice ran against his deepest interests,” which was to live despite his briefing remaining time, ultimately distorting his judgement into choosing a course of treatment that ultimately ended his life in a much more painful manner. Another case of patient decisions that Gawande discusses is Mr. Howe, who aggressively refused to be put on a breathing machine, neglecting the fact that “with antibiotics and some high-tech support...he would recover fully.” As Gawande and K awaited for Mrs. Howe’s decision to save her husband’s life, Mrs. Howe emotionally breaks down
Though there are several patients featured, the story centers around Cody Curtis, a woman who was diagnosed with liver cancer. At 56, she is a beautiful woman who doesn’t appear to be sick. She seems healthy and happy. However she is in constant pain and is suffering greatly. She is given a diagnosis of only six months left to live and sets a date to choose to die. She has complete control over when she will die. She can make peace with those around her and complete her life before she dies. She says that death with dignity won’t be easy, but it would be easier than the alternatives. However, she outlives her diagnosis and her quality of life continues to improve. When things take a turn for the worst, she decides to end her
Moving forward, people should be able to be put out of their misery of their terminal illness. This is something that without a doubt will tear a person to shreds. This type of news, “can trigger feelings of depression, in both patient and loved one. These feelings can be severe or mild and can often be just one of the stages that a person goes through when learning of catastrophic news” (Terminal Illness). Some terminal illnesses this time is also very stressful with decisions that one can make. Although depending on what the patient has, the illness can be brutal and
It seemed to be extremely difficult for these patients to be seen by the doctor, let alone get proper long-term treatment. The documentary revealed many instances of short- treatments like pain killers or other medications which resulted in the need for patients to come back for more. One of the patients said that a doctor was supposed to follow up with him regarding treatment for his condition, but one of the workers informed him that it could take over a month for them to get back to him. That was a part of the film that I did not like because many of these patients do not receive the sense of urgency that they would receive at a private doctor. Although the emergency room treats hundreds of people a day, they are still real people who suffer with real pain and obstacles, and it is hard for them to feel like they are being pushed under the rug after being in the waiting room for hours on
“Machines can extend the length but not always the quality of life” (Cloud,2000,p.62). As doctors, they need to think about the well being of the patient and if any methods could really help the situation. It is hard to let someone that is close to us die, but we need to look beyond the fact that you will miss them. You need to think about what is best for the patient and if they are terminal; prolonging their life is not the best thing. It is important to prepare for our own death and make our wishes known.
A divergent set of issues and opinions involving medical care for the very seriously ill patient have dogged the bioethics community for decades. While sophisticated medical technology has allowed people to live longer, it has also caused protracted death, most often to the severe detriment of individuals and their families. Ira Byock, director of palliative medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, believes too many Americans are “dying badly.” In discussing this issue, he stated, “Families cannot imagine there could be anything worse than their loved one dying, but in fact, there are things worse.” “It’s having someone you love…suffering, dying connected to machines” (CBS News, 2014). In the not distant past, the knowledge, skills, and technology were simply not available to cure, much less prolong the deaths of gravely ill people. In addition to the ethical and moral dilemmas this presents, the costs of intensive treatment often do not realize appreciable benefits. However, cost alone should not determine when care becomes “futile” as this veers medicine into an even more dangerous ethical quagmire. While preserving life with the best possible care is always good medicine, the suffering and protracted deaths caused from the continued use of futile measures benefits no one. For this reason, the determination of futility should be a joint decision between the physician, the patient, and his or her surrogate.
The movie Sicko evaluates the medical services and shows the U.S. government 's role in policing the medical profession. Before I watched this movie, I thought that living in America was living the American dream. However, this American dream is only a façade or an illusion that takes my mind away from some of America 's flaws. In this documentary, the director and writer Michael Moore exposes the dysfunctional health care system in the United States, which sacrifice essential health services in order to maximize profits and insurance companies, which pay bonuses to employees who are successful in denying coverage and claims. They are in the business of finding reasons not to spend money. Health insurance does not protect you from not paying.