Doctors not doing the job when it comes to end-of-life decision making
A piece on the AP wire, published in my local paper, draws attention to new research that shows the following . . .
- Doctors are not discussing end of life issues with their patients.
- Patients who have these discussions are not more likely to become depressed than those who do not. In fact, they were less likely to spend their last days in a hospital hooked up to all manner of machines.
Here’s a snip from the article . . .
Many people do not get such straight talk from doctors, who often think they are doing patients a favor by keeping hope alive.
New research shows they are wrong.
Only one-third of terminally ill cancer patients in a new, federally funded study said their doctors had discussed end-of-life care.
Surprisingly, patients who had these talks were no more likely to become depressed than those who did not, the study found. They were less likely to spend their final days in hospitals, tethered to machines. They avoided costly, futile care. And their loved ones were more at peace after they died.
Convinced of such benefits and that patients have a right to know, the California Assembly just passed a bill to require that health-care providers give complete answers to dying patients who ask about their options. The bill now goes to the state Senate.
Some doctors’ groups are fighting the bill, saying it interferes with medical practice. But at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago this month, where the federally funded study was presented, the society’s president said she was upset at its finding that most doctors were not having honest talks.
“That is distressing if it’s true. It says we have a lot of homework to do,” said Dr. Nancy Davidson, a cancer specialist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
I’m no expert on health care (I just play one on TV), but I struggle to see why it’s a bad idea to give patients the information they need to make their own decisions, particularly when it’s the last one of any consequence they’ll get to make.
Tags: endof life, hospice, decision making