Doctors' Fear of Professional Failure

I first would like to have my visitors here read a comment by a medical student to my blog thread "Telling Patients They are Terminal" in August 2005.Dr. B-As a current medical student and future physician reading your posting, “Telling patients they are terminal” I felt a surprising emotion: fear. My feeling of fear came from your comment that physicians often cause much of the confusion that surrounds end of life care. Specifically you stated that certain physicians will order more aggressive therapies and more diagnostic test when they know in their hearts that there is nothing more to do but ease the pain. In this situation, as you stated, the families will often get an unclear message as to the condition of the patient and how much time is left with their loved one. This confusing message that doctors often give patients can translate into disastrous effects. In this example the family might not understand that the last few days are near and the opportunity to say goodbye may pass them by.It is easy to say that such physicians that give unclear messages are "bad doctors." However, although I promise to be the best physician possible I fear that I could someday make the same mistake. As a student among so-called "overachievers" in medical school the idea of failure is so frightening that we all work as hard as we can. In fact this fear of failure is what was selected for when we were accepted to medical school among thousands of applicants. Certainly this culture of f...
Source: Bioethics Discussion Blog - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs