principles … Standard of Care … Know your medical facts – diagnosis – prognosis – treatment. Get second opinion … go to the literature. Substituted judgment … “If for whatever reason you are unable to make your own medical decisions … Who should make them for you?”. Put yourself in the patient’s place – […]
decision making … principles & process … Read More »
Oregon’s public health division has released statistics on deaths under its physician-assisted suicide (PAS) legislation. It shows a steady increase in the number of lethal prescriptions and in the number of deaths. In 1998, the first year after PAS was legalized, there were 24 prescriptions and 16 deaths. In 2011, there were 114 prescriptions and
Oregon assisted suicide update … Read More »
roundtable discussion … CAPC IPAL-ICU website …
palliative care in the icu … Read More »
Recently I asked my sober priest friend Monsignor Richey how I’d know if I was making any spiritual progress. The pious urge to pray many hours a day? I was thinking. Guru status? He pondered for a moment. “If crazy people aren’t afraid to come up to you and talk … that’s a pretty good
presence … (defined) Read More »
Salpeter et. al. summarize prognostic factors in cancer and non-cancer diagnoses that are consistently associated with a survival of 6 months or less. “Despite different cancer characteristics, a fairly universal picture of terminal disease included decreasing performance status, advancing age, weight loss, metastatic disease, disease recurrence, and laboratory abnormalities indicating extensive disease. Most of the
prognosis factors marking 6 month survival … Read More »
… in the setting of physician assisted suicide and euthanasia … “The secular version of a “good death” is a terribly lonely one. Placing the emphasis on unbearable suffering and the patient’s autonomy, or right to “die with dignity,” is supremely ironic because the patient is never truly autonomous as he asks the community, in
the irony of patient autonomy … Read More »
Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves
giving ourselves into the hands of death … Read More »
Quality of life is the provoking theme launched by Medicine and the Person as the subject of a systematic review for this year. Science offers us adequate tools for understanding the biological side of a disease. Nevertheless, we need different methods to understand the sick person who relies on us. Looking at the sick
my glance meets the glance of the other … Read More »
… he bears us in himself with compassionate love. The Hebrew text of the Old Testament does not draw on psychology to speak about God’s compassionate suffering with man. Rather, in accordance with the concreteness of Semitic thought, it designates it with a word whose basic meaning refers to a bodily organ, namely, rahamim. Taken
God shelters us in himself … Read More »
18 years after his stillborn daughter was born,Steven Guy said: “I have moved on; I can talk about the day she died and not cry, sometimes…She has changed me from the shy insecure person I was then to the openly emotional, caring, supportive, and strong man I am now.” The Lancet discusses grief in the
grief and growth … Read More »
