End Of Life Care Research Paper
First Last
Ms. Cobb
ENGL 1213/0272
28 September 2011 “Death Panels”: How Should the Medical Profession Handle End of Life Care?
End of life counseling sessions where doctors advise patients how to conduct their own deaths have stirred up a firestorm of controversy in the press. These are sessions where a patient, who is terminally ill, talks with their doctor about their last wishes before they get to a state where they can no longer communicate, e.g. comatose. Supporters of these sessions hope that the dying and their doctors will have honest and open talks about death, coming to terms with this reality and being better prepared for it when it comes, putting the quality of life as defined by the patient over their quantity of life, which naturally would be critically short. Critics of the idea use the term “death panel” to imply that no consensus between doctor and patient would be reached and government programs would decide when to “pull the plug on grandma” and coldly decide when a patient should die. One of the biggest questions within this issue is how realistically we could approach an equal-sided doctor to patient counseling session. The balance is between …show more content…
These doctor-to-patient sessions have nothing to do with the government run “death panels” described by Sarah Palin consisting of impersonal juries of accountants who only see the bottom line. Instead, end of life counseling puts the control back in patients’ hands, allowing them to dictate when and how they would like to die. These counseling sessions seek to nurture better relationships between doctors and their patients and plant seeds of change in a culture where death is no longer respected or valued. They diminish grief and suffering in the ill and their loved ones. End of life counseling sessions are a real solution to the issue of dying with dignity in a modern day healthcare
Ms. Cobb
ENGL 1213/0272
28 September 2011 “Death Panels”: How Should the Medical Profession Handle End of Life Care?
End of life counseling sessions where doctors advise patients how to conduct their own deaths have stirred up a firestorm of controversy in the press. These are sessions where a patient, who is terminally ill, talks with their doctor about their last wishes before they get to a state where they can no longer communicate, e.g. comatose. Supporters of these sessions hope that the dying and their doctors will have honest and open talks about death, coming to terms with this reality and being better prepared for it when it comes, putting the quality of life as defined by the patient over their quantity of life, which naturally would be critically short. Critics of the idea use the term “death panel” to imply that no consensus between doctor and patient would be reached and government programs would decide when to “pull the plug on grandma” and coldly decide when a patient should die. One of the biggest questions within this issue is how realistically we could approach an equal-sided doctor to patient counseling session. The balance is between …show more content…
These doctor-to-patient sessions have nothing to do with the government run “death panels” described by Sarah Palin consisting of impersonal juries of accountants who only see the bottom line. Instead, end of life counseling puts the control back in patients’ hands, allowing them to dictate when and how they would like to die. These counseling sessions seek to nurture better relationships between doctors and their patients and plant seeds of change in a culture where death is no longer respected or valued. They diminish grief and suffering in the ill and their loved ones. End of life counseling sessions are a real solution to the issue of dying with dignity in a modern day healthcare