The Hasting Center has
announced the 2013 winners of the Hastings Center Cunniff-Dixon Physician
Awards.
The purpose of these five prizes (one to a senior physician, one
to a mid-career physician, and three to early-career physicians) is to foster
those skills and virtues by providing financial prizes to those physicians who have shown their care of patients to be exemplary, a model
of good medicine for other physicians, and a great benefit in advancing the centrality
of end-of-life care as a basic part of the doctor-patient relationship.
Here is the rationale for the award: Care for patients at
the end of life has long troubled American medicine, not only in its failure to
provide good palliative care, but also in the relationship between doctors and
patients. Many efforts to remedy this situation have emerged:
- A growing and strengthening palliative care movement,
- Better understanding of the situation of patients at the end of life,
- A sharper focus on the values and behavior of physicians in their care of the dying,
- A more general effort to gain medical recognition that end-of-life care is just as important as care during all other phases of life.
Great progress has been made, but there is still a
distance to go. As the number and percentage of people who die from chronic and
degenerative diseases increase, the physician skills and virtues necessary to
provide good end-of-life care also increase.
4 comments:
As an outsider --and from the PATIENT's perspective, I understand that Hastings works for "public policy" and "public good" ---but don't they let the patients down?
WHY haven't they, as leaders in Bioethics, insisted that physicians be MANDATED to SEEK INFORMED CONSENT for EITHER curative care or palliative care from later-stage elderly cancer patients, and other elderly terminally ill patients, in both the OUTPATIENT and the INPATIENT setting?
We really have NO PAC that is looking out for the interests and protecting the autonomy of the old people.
The Bioethicists sppear to serve the for-profit medical establishment in their best interests and appear to manipulate "ethics" and the the "public good" on behalf of the special interests.
While these individual awards are wonderful for the awardees and their patients, think how much more Hastings could do to prevent OVERTREATMENT and UNDERTREATMENT of the elderly on Medicare and Medicaid if they backed a federal mandate to physicians to actively SEEK informed consent for the curative care as compared to palliative care from elderly Medicare patients.
Thaddeus is not your friend in this regard. He shills for the same people who are depriving you of what you think should be your rights.
Isn't it disturbing that the poster at "January 15, 2013 at 8:48 PM" doesn't understand that the interests here have nothing to do with patients. Tell him the truth that it is all about quack doctors being able to pronounce unfettered death sentences on patients. We know that's your agenda Thaddeus Pope. Explain it to everybody. They seem to be duped by your nefarious agenda.
Such unfair comments about Thaddeous Pope who doesn't make the law but explains it and makes it available to the public.
If it weren't for the scholarship of Professor Pope available to ALL on the Internet, we would have NO HISTORY WHATSOEVER of the development of medical futility and the law since the 1991 PSDA was passed by the US Congress at the request of the financial arm of Medicare and the Republican leaders of the Senate and the Congress.
I do understnd that Bioethics ---especially concerning end-of-life care for elderly patients ---has little to do with the elderly patients --and has more to do with saving dollars and preserving profits because, of course, the bioethicists work within the for-profit healthcare system to solve problems and provide moral guidance for the policy makers.
I do understand that patients are merely product to be managed for profit in the for-profit health care system that exists in the USA.
I don't think that Professor Pope, as a law professor, is opposed to mandated informed consent for EITHER Curative Care OR Palliative Care, whichever is statistically more beneficial to the patient.
I'm sure you know that the ABA has offered a half-hearted Resolution to the Congress that might somewhat clarify the provisions of the 1991 PSDA that appear to protect the autonomy of elderly
patients.
Also, there is a lawsuit against HHS for misusing observation status against the elderly to save money for the government and the private insurers ---at the expense of the elderly patients, in terms of their health and their savings ---pushing them onto Medicaid immecessarily, etc.. where they become a burden to the State.
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