Anchor
14th February 2012, 22:46
"Why MOST doctors like me would rather DIE than endure the pain of treatment we inflict on others for terminal diseases"
I can think of only one doctor among all my medical acquaintances who has had cancer and fought it with medicine all the way to their death.
Medics’ scepticism about the worth of their own ‘lifesaving’ interventions has long been suspected. In one poll, around half of German specialists admitted that they would not undergo the operations they recommended to their patients.
Dr Eckart Fiedler, of the German health insurance company Barmer Ersatzkasse, said the 1996 survey showed that doctors felt many patients would be better off foregoing operations and instead taking their chances without the surgeon’s knife.
In similar fashion, a survey of nurses at a Massachusetts hospital found that nearly half of them would refuse treatment if they developed a serious illness at the age of 85 after having been in good health.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2100684/Why-doctors-like-die-endure-pain-treatment-advanced-cancer.html
False hope: Medical TV shows like Holby City which feature miraculous recoveries increase the myth everyone can be saved from illness....
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people,’ Murray continued. ‘That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life.
‘The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines and assaulted with drugs. I cannot count the number of times that physicians have told me: “Promise me, if you find me like this, you’ll kill me.” ’
The problem of overtreatment is most intense when young people are suffering from very serious illnesses. You get their wives, mothers and other relatives fighting all the way and demanding the doctors do ‘all that they can’.
But often, those relatives are fighting for their own sakes rather than the good of the patient. They can’t bear the thought of the loved one dying, so they blind themselves to the futile trauma they are putting them through.
I can think of only one doctor among all my medical acquaintances who has had cancer and fought it with medicine all the way to their death.
Medics’ scepticism about the worth of their own ‘lifesaving’ interventions has long been suspected. In one poll, around half of German specialists admitted that they would not undergo the operations they recommended to their patients.
Dr Eckart Fiedler, of the German health insurance company Barmer Ersatzkasse, said the 1996 survey showed that doctors felt many patients would be better off foregoing operations and instead taking their chances without the surgeon’s knife.
In similar fashion, a survey of nurses at a Massachusetts hospital found that nearly half of them would refuse treatment if they developed a serious illness at the age of 85 after having been in good health.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2100684/Why-doctors-like-die-endure-pain-treatment-advanced-cancer.html
False hope: Medical TV shows like Holby City which feature miraculous recoveries increase the myth everyone can be saved from illness....
Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people,’ Murray continued. ‘That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life.
‘The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines and assaulted with drugs. I cannot count the number of times that physicians have told me: “Promise me, if you find me like this, you’ll kill me.” ’
The problem of overtreatment is most intense when young people are suffering from very serious illnesses. You get their wives, mothers and other relatives fighting all the way and demanding the doctors do ‘all that they can’.
But often, those relatives are fighting for their own sakes rather than the good of the patient. They can’t bear the thought of the loved one dying, so they blind themselves to the futile trauma they are putting them through.