Every once in awhile I come across another physician blog that tells it like it is without ranting and raving about managed care/insurance issues, hospital administrators or patients with unmet expectations.
This one comes from an internal medicine resident recounting an experience with a terminally-ill patient and end-of-life decisions, a living will, the needs of patients and the decisions made by an attending physician and a resident physician.
Her experiences remined me of the 3 months I spent as an intern in critical care units. The discussion, and perhaps, more importantly, enforcement/following of living wills and the battles that ensue with families, doctors, housestaff, attendings and medical technology in the war against human disease.
For a sobering account and one doctor's piece of mind on this check out:
The only thing I had to do was help Jerry and I failed
