Roger Kligler writes, “I’m a doctor with incurable stage 4 prostate cancer. When my suffering becomes intolerable, I hope my doctors will permit me the option to end it peacefully with medical aid in dying. Medical aid in dying gives mentally capable, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live the option to request a prescription medication they can choose to take in order to end unbearable suffering by gently dying in their sleep.”
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Physician-Assisted Suicide Won’t Atone for Medicine’s ‘Original Sin’January 31, 2018 |
Ira Byock writes, “Centuries from now, one of the things our era will be known for is the plague of dying badly. A growing number of physicians believe that one solution is helping their dying patients choose to end their lives. I disagree.”
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“I Help People To Live Until That Very Last Moment”January 24, 2018 |
What makes a good death? This is just one of the questions Mosaic asked four end-of-life doulas, who have been trained to be a calm, compassionate presence for people who are dying, and their families
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By using an artificially intelligent algorithm to predict patient mortality, a research team from Stanford University is hoping to improve the timing of end-of-life care for critically ill patients. In tests, the system proved eerily accurate, correctly predicting mortality outcomes in 90 percent of cases. But while the system is able to predict when a patient might die, it still cannot tell doctors how it came to its conclusion
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Two medics roll Mrs. M into the emergency department. Sweat drips from her forehead. Her chest heaves in and out as she tries to suck every last oxygen molecule from inside the oxygen mask. I introduce myself and she opens her eyes but her glassy stare lands beyond me. “She has metastatic breast cancer,” says one of the medics. “She’s in hospice. But her son wants everything done.”
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No, Most People Aren’t In Severe Pain When They DieDecember 12, 2017 |
Many people fear death partly because of the perception they might suffer increasing pain and other awful symptoms the nearer it gets. There’s often the belief palliative care may not alleviate such pain, leaving many people to die excruciating deaths
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Should Eye Surgeons Fulfill A Dying Man’s Wish To See His Family?December 5, 2017 |
Vincent Thomas had battled multiple myeloma for quite some time and gone through countless treatments and drug regimens, which weren’t stopping his cancer. He and his family made the decision to go on hospice care. The thing was, his eyesight had failed him
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The Challenges of Defining and Diagnosing Brain DeathNovember 15, 2017 |
A new Johns Hopkins support team helps clinicians and families understand a difficult diagnosis. The topic was the focus of a September Ethics for Lunch discussion in the Chevy Chase Bank Auditorium of The Johns Hopkins Hospital, hosted by the Berman Institute of Bioethics
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