excerpt:
In talking to clinicians about why we so often fail to be effective at the end of people’s lives, I was often told: My patients expect too much. Their families are unrealistic. They’re in denial.
But I came to think: isn’t that just human nature? Isn’t that how I would be when I’m told I have an incurable heart condition or cancer? It seems to me our job in medicine is to just deal with it. If we have to wait for people to stop yearning for the long tail—for the lottery ticket—in order to help them, we will be hurting a lot of people for a long time to come. Instead, we need to become more effective in using the techniques that experts already have for walking people through these moments in their lives.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/ask/2010/07/questions-for-gawande.html#ixzz0wLcIUgw5
No comments:
Post a Comment