Doctors Avoid End-of-Life Talks
The researchers surveyed 4,074 doctors who took care of cancer patients, instructing them to imagine one who had only four to six months left, but was still feeling well… The results came as a surprise: the doctors were even more reluctant to ask certain questions than the researchers had expected. Although 65 percent said they would talk about the prognosis “now,” far fewer would discuss the other issues at the same time: resuscitation, 44 percent; hospice, 26 percent; site of death, 21 percent.
Full report on why doctors postpone end-of-life talks.
These results do not surprise me. It’s hard enough to discuss pending death in vague, almost theoretical terms, as though it were happening to someone else. The gory details are undoubtedly even harder to discuss with someone about to experience them.
It is important that the patient’s preferences be discussed before the patient is too ill to consider options and communicate. Otherwise, family members are left to decide among themselves what a dying loved one might have wanted, and those are far more difficult decisions to make.
This finding is hard to undrstand. You would think this would be one of the things doctors, especially in encology, for example, would be skilled at doing.
I agree with Nancy.