May 13, 2019
End of Life
May 6, 2019
A Rising Trend in Cancer Care Targets Physical, Existential Threats Patients Confront
(The Washington Post) – Often called palliative care or integrative medicine, the comprehensive approach focuses on patients’ emotional needs and physical symptoms in addition to treating the disease. In 2016, 1,831 U.S. hospitals — about three-quarters — had a palliative … Read More
April 29, 2019
AI Could Predict Death. But What If the Algorithm Is Biased?
(Wired) – The FDA is also looking at how AI will be used in health care and posted a call earlier this month for a regulatory framework for AI in medical care. As the conversation around artificial intelligence and medicine … Read More
April 26, 2019
A Good Life and a Good Death: What Is Palliative Care?
(NPR) – In her new book, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, Puri writes about how palliative care specialists are working to change medicine from within — teaching other doctors how to talk to patients about … Read More
April 25, 2019
Doctors Can Ignore Your DNR Order If You’re Pregnant
(Popular Science) – The family successfully sued—the authors of the law in question said that the hospital was misinterpreting it, and the fetus was no longer viable. But in more than half of America’s states, there are laws on the … Read More
April 23, 2019
UAE Woman Munira Abdulla Wakes Up after 27 Years in a Coma
(BBC) – A woman from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who was seriously injured in a traffic accident in 1991 has made a seemingly miraculous recovery after emerging from a 27-year-long coma. Munira Abdulla, who was aged 32 at the … Read More
March 29, 2019
Portugal Baby Born to Woman Brain Dead for Three Months
(BBC) – A funeral is being held for a 26-year-old woman who gave birth to a baby boy on Thursday despite being brain dead since December. International sportswoman Catarina Sequeira was declared brain dead after an acute asthma attack at … Read More
March 27, 2019
Their Baby Died During His Nap. Then Medical Bureaucrats Deepened the Parents’ Anguish
(STAT News) – When an infant unexpectedly stops breathing during sleep, the usual bureaucracy of death is multiplied, the paperwork thickened with accusation. Investigations are triggered with the local police, the state police, the agency that checks for child abuse. … Read More
March 22, 2019
Many Catholic Hospitals Fail to Disclose Religious Affiliation, Restrictions Online
(Reuters) – Patients should know if the hospital they choose will restrict their care for religious reasons, but among nearly 650 Catholic hospitals in the U.S., a new study finds that one in five don’t explicitly disclose this information on … Read More
March 14, 2019
Will Machines Be Able to Tell When Patients Are About to Die?
(Wired) – Now we’re talking about machines. An 18-layer DNN learning from the electronic health records of almost 160,000 patients was able to predict the time until death on a test population of 40,000 patient records, with remarkable accuracy. The … Read More
March 11, 2019
Doctor Delivers End-of-Life News Via ‘Robot,’ Leaving Family Frustrated
(U.S.A. Today) – A California hospital delivered end-of-life news to a 78-year-old patient via a robotic machine this week, prompting the man’s family to go public with their frustration. Ernest Quintana was admitted to the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center emergency department in … Read More
March 8, 2019
Family Medicine
(The New Yorker) – My father’s spirits sagged. He was a physician and a scientist, who had spent decades pursuing the secrets of blood: how it flows, pools, clots, conducts intracellular conversations with itself. Too frail for what had been … Read More
March 7, 2019
Ash Wednesday Brings a ‘Welcome Honesty’ to Discussions About Mortality
(NPR) – Serna says death is usually sanitized, and we try to avoid even talking about it. As a hospital chaplain, he talks about mortality more than most people do. But today, Ash Wednesday, is one of the few days … Read More
March 4, 2019
Man with Motor Neuron Disease Dies After Removing Mask
(BBC) – John King, 77, from Worcestershire, died on Thursday after removing a mask he relied on for air to stay alive. After his diagnosis 18 months ago, the businessman had been fed through a tube and needed constant care. … Read More
February 28, 2019
Listening to Older Patients Who Want to Stop Dialysis
(STAT News) – Older adults with advanced kidney disease who want to forgo dialysis often encounter similar resistance from physicians, according to a new study in JAMA Internal Medicine by Wong and colleagues at the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health … Read More
February 21, 2019
I’ve Seen Countless Deaths in My Time Nursing, But I’ll Never Forget My First
(The Guardian) – Our teachers tried teaching us about death during nursing training, but it’s impossible to prepare for your first experience of it. You can learn about the theories, about the principles of pain and symptom control, but that’s … Read More
February 19, 2019
Academy-Award Nominated Film ‘End Game’ Examines End-of-Life Care
(PBS News Hour) – The Academy Award-nominated documentary “End Game” looks at different approaches in palliative care for people with terminal illness. The film follows medical practitioners, patients, and their families, as they tackle the difficult questions that arise during … Read More
February 15, 2019
My Wife Was Dying, and We Didn’t Tell Our Children
(The Atlantic) – We decided not to tell the kids. Marla knew that once our three daughters understood that their mother had been given 1,000 days to live, they’d start counting. They would not be able to enjoy school, friends, … Read More
February 15, 2019
A Nursing Home Patient ‘Rotted to Death’ under Nurses’ Care, Ohio Attorney General Says
(CNN) – Current and former employees of an Ohio nursing facility are accused of mistreating two patients in their care, including one who died as a result of the nurses’ actions, Attorney General Dave Yost said Thursday. A Franklin County … Read More
February 6, 2019
Dying While Black: Perpetual Gaps Exist in Health Care for African-Americans
(The Conversation) – This disparity in black patients’ pain management continues even as black patients are dying. Families often want to ensure that their loved ones are as comfortable as possible once patients reach the point where death is near. Racialized … Read More
February 4, 2019
Minority Hospitals Less Likely to Give End of Life Relief, Study Says
(UPI) – Hospitals that primarily serve people of color are less likely to provide relief from the stress of a serious illness, regardless of the person’s race, a new study says. Only about 22 percent of white patients with metastatic … Read More
January 24, 2019
Dying Man Given Bill for Tens of Thousands of Pounds for NHS Treatment
(The Guardian) – Before 2017, migrants and visitors to the UK not eligible for free healthcare were entitled to receive it and be billed afterwards. But two years ago, in a bid to eliminate so-called health tourism, the Conservative government … Read More
January 21, 2019
A New Edition of Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Is Now Available
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry (vol. 15, no. 3, 2018) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Strategies to Guide the Return of Genomic Research Findings: An Australian Perspective” by Lisa Eckstein and Margaret Otlowski “Medicolegal Complications of Apnoea Testing for … Read More
January 18, 2019
A New Edition of Nursing Ethics Is Now Available
Nursing Ethics (vol. 25, no. 6, 2018) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Ethical Competence: An Integrative Review” by Kathleen Lechasseur, Chantal Caux, Stéphanie Dollé, and Alain Legault “Ethical Climate and Missed Nursing Care in Cancer Care units” … Read More
January 16, 2019
What People Actually Say Before They Die
(The Atlantic) – Felix’s 53-year-old daughter, Lisa Smartt, kept track of his utterances, writing them down as she sat at his bedside in those final days. Smartt majored in linguistics at UC Berkeley in the 1980s and built a career … Read More
