End-of-Life Care Needs Sweeping Overhaul, Panel Says - NYTimes.com

End-of-Life Care Needs Sweeping Overhaul, Panel Says - NYTimes.com:



'via Blog this'

When I was an emergency room doctor I saw the catastrophe that ensues when someone is dying and the family has to make complex end of life decisions. Most of the time the patient who was dying had been housed in a nursing home and essentially left to die. They would be emaciated, severely dehydrated and comatose with their internal organs failing. There was essentially, no "person" left.

Enter the family. Those who had cared for and loved the parent almost always asked us to do nothing and let them pass peacefully. But, invariably, the problem child of the family would strenuously object to that outcome. "Doc, I want you to do EVERYTHING possible to keep my mother alive, everything! You hear me Doc?" Of course this would be the same one who had broken his mother's heart time and again, stolen money from her, gone to jail and lived off of her pitiful pension. Euthanasia should be legal in this country, especially for the guilt ridden family members who would put their parent through the excruciating procedures required to "Do everything possible". In medicine we say there is a huge difference between prolonging life and prolonging death. As a society we routinely spend a huge percentage of our medical resources prolonging death, in the most macabre ways.