Your personalizing of this makes no sense. It’s as if you are saying that–if the medical community’s ethics are questioned in any way–that’s an attack on the community.
We live in a free society and everyone is entitled to their opinion on what medical ethics should be. That said, the medical profession’s opinion should not be the final word. If they can’t stand the heat of having their positions challenged, I suggest they go somewhere and set up a dictatorship. Otherwise, complaining about others challenging their positions is just whining.
I think the AP reporter is the origin of the several quotes about freeing the bed and “mad dash.” But, there are so many copies of each quote, that I don’t think you’re going to be able to get everyone to pull them.
Can you convince Melanie Childers to stop saying the Bishop is helping to murder Emilio?
There are consequences to your words.
We all do this for the love of the cure, of caring, and because it makes us feel like good people – it soothes our consciences.
I strongly disagree that ethics are a matter of opinion – that one person’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. I certainly don’t agree that docs who don’t want to prolong dying in children with collapsing lungs or to perform abortions are simply expressing an opinion. There is a definite right and wrong, here: First do no harm. Sometimes judgment is needed to weigh the harm vs. benefit. However, the doc is the one who will be forced to act. The option is to have the oversite committee and to offer a time to transfer to someone else.
Can you imagine if a trial continued 24/7/365? That’s family medicine – even when we’re not on call, we are responsible for our patients. In a small town, everyone knows where you live, go to church and what’s in your grocery cart. Family docs who deliver babies are on 5 “call lists” at our hospital. The ER or Deliver can assign a patient who had no prior doc in town from the OB, Gynecology, Medicine, Trauma/Surgery, Pediatrics and Newborn “lists.” Why would anyone continue hospital care plus office care if any patient’s family could insist on repeat aggressive treatments like Emilio’s treatment for pneumothorax or even constant, repeat CPR?
How long would a doc be able to keep a good conscience if this happened a couple of times?
As I said, read what people say about doctors (and by extension, the nurses and everyone else who would have to support the lie) after one of these posts and consider the effect on the patient and family of the family doc in New Braunfels, Texas.
Or consider the LVN who works a 12 hour shift and whose patients now question her complicity with the conspiracy — her job is even more on the line that the doc, who can go down the street to the next hospital or quit hospital practice all together.
And I’m afraid that that is what is going to happen: more family docs will decide to admit to hospitalists rather than admit their patients to the hospital. Fewer will enter hospital work and geriatricians will become even more scarce.
Especially: more small town docs will find it difficult to transfer their sickest patients to the tertiary centers.
