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>Why do doctors continually perpetuate this notion that slipping softly into death (palliative care, hospice) is preferable to continually trying to avoid it by

>Why do doctors continually perpetuate this notion that slipping softly into death (palliative care, hospice) is preferable to continually trying to avoid it by way of riskier and riskier attempts at treating the root cause? Most end-of-life decisions don't involve an otherwise healthy young person who might expect another 50 or 60 years of good-quality life, they involve someone who has multiple serious health problems and is definitely going to die of something in the very immediate future. We're not talking about saving lives, we're talking about briefly delaying an inevitable death. How much suffering would you be willing to endure for the possibility of another few days or weeks in a hospital bed? Doctors know what these deaths look like. They know what it feels like to effectively torture someone for no good reason. Doctors overwhelmingly choose palliative care for themselves, because they know that extraordinary medical efforts for very sick patients are invariably brutal, miserable and futile.

omgwtfbyobbq 8y ago
>Most end-of-life decisions don't involve an otherwise healthy young person who might expect another 50 or 60 years of good-quality life, they involve someone who has multiple serious health problems and is definitely going to die of something in the very immediate future. One significant problem, at least in my experience, is when doctors take that approach with someone, based primarily on their age and on inaccurate diagnoses, who has multiple serious health problems and does not die in the very immediate future. The common view seems like an inversion of Blackstone's ratio (better to prematurely end the life of one individual than to let however many other individuals suffer). To be fair, as a personal point of view this is fine, but it may also merge with socio-economic constraints in a really ugly way. In addition, no one I've spoken to has made any effort to even consider and explore differences in how other people experience pain or view death. When all is said and done, it can be a real shit show.

omgwtfbyobbq 8y ago

>Most end-of-life decisions don't involve an otherwise healthy young person who might expect another 50 or 60 years of good-quality life, they involve someone who has multiple serious health problems and is definitely going to die of something in the very immediate future. One significant problem, at least in my experience, is when doctors take that approach with someone, based primarily on their age and on inaccurate diagnoses, who has multiple serious health problems and does not die in the very immediate future. The common view seems like an inversion of Blackstone's ratio (better to prematurely end the life of one individual than to let however many other individuals suffer). To be fair, as a personal point of view this is fine, but it may also merge with socio-economic constraints in a really ugly way. In addition, no one I've spoken to has made any effort to even consider and explore differences in how other people experience pain or view death. When all is said and done, it can be a real shit show.