I came across this article from the Texas Tribune talking about Doctors struggle with end-of-life talks .The medical field is always full of interesting stories and things that we as patients have the right to know or get information about. I can't imagine how difficult it would be to tell a family that their loved ones have a certain time to live or that they did not make it after a certain surgery. Doctors face internal and external barriers to start the conversation about it. According to a survey that was done by many doctors, Dr. Ziad Obermeyer states that "These conversations are just insanely difficult, whether in the emergency room or the hospital or the office".
Most physicians work in systems that provide little help, and often don't know what to say or when to say it and that is why they are asking that Medicare begins to paying for end-of-life conversations. Earlier this month, the federal health program for the elderly proposed to start paying physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants to talk with patients about their end-of-life wishes. Details of the plan are expected later this year, with possible adoption next year.
Dr. Anthony Back, co director of the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at the University of Washington, which is connected with one of the survey's sponsors said, "Doctors should start talking in a general way with patients when they first seek any kind of care." When the patient develops a serious illness, those conversations should resume.
I am pursuing a career in the medical field. Someday I will become the nurse I have always wanted to be. Yes, I do agree that is difficult to talk about the possibility of death or death itself but, as a professional you should already be prepared for this kind of situations. How can they be asking to get paid more for something that is already their job. They should just make training more mandatory or review every other month. I think is more money getting used for nonsense instead of something important like more studies on curing cancer or something in that matter.
A career in the medical field is demanding to say the least- especially involving emergency and life threatening treatments. However those treatments come hand in hand with the necessity for end-of-life planning, which can be difficult to approach for many physicians. As explored in Bertha Juarez' post "Doctors struggle with end-of-life talks", many physicians come unprepared and often ignore or delay this important topic- which can obviously be problematic; and if the physicians responsible for caring for individual patients are to assist in end-of-life planning, then that aspect of treatment definitely needs some improvement. Though, while I agree with Bertha's notion that this improvement doesn't lie in the payroll of the physicians, I feel that there definitely needs to be some additional allocation of resources towards the end-of-life planning aspect of the hospitalization process.
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