NPR: Knowing How Doctors Die Can Change Others’ Decisions

From a recent NPR piece on Knowing How Doctors Die Can Change End-of-Life Discussions:

Dr. Kendra Fleagle Gorlitsky recalls the anguish she felt performing CPR on elderly, terminally ill patients. It looks nothing like what we see on TV. In real life, ribs often break and few survive the ordeal.

 

“I felt like I was beating up people at the end of their life,” she says. “I would be doing the CPR with tears coming down sometimes, and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, goodbye.’ Because I knew that it very likely not going to be successful. It just seemed a terrible way to end someone’s life.”

 

Gorlitsky now teaches medicine at the University of Southern California and says these early clinical experiences have stayed with her. Gorlitsky wants something different for herself and for her loved ones. And most other doctors do too: A Stanford University study shows almost 90 percent of doctors would forgo resuscitation and aggressive treatment if facing a terminal illness.

This selection also reminded me about an important essay from a few  years ago, How Doctors Die, by Dr. Ken Murray.  Hat tip to my Dickinson Law colleague Professor Laurel Terry for sending me this NPR piece.