Jessica Caldern Padilla

TELL IT LIKE IT IS

When I finished the reading of the article I thought how many cases could have been different, how many lives could maybe have been improved if physicians had been honest and direct with their terminal patients. One conclusion present in the article, based on the cases given by Gawande, is that coping with death is much easier for patients, family and even doctors when a discussion about the issue takes place. Diverse examples in the article show that when the usually involve triad (patient, doctor, family/friends) discuss death, and especially when the ill person communicates her/his wishes and desires, is notably easy to know what to do or what decisions to make when the inevitable death arrives. That the management of death for all the involved parts is less problematic when a discussion about it has been made is basically a fact. However, the problem arises when doctors fail to inform their patients how serious, and in this case talking about terminally ill people, how untreatable their diseases are. It would be considerably easy in the long run for both patients and family to know exactly what they are facing, so they know how to manage with eventual yet unavoidable death. If doctors would tell it like is, as harsh as it sounds, the ill patients and their families would have to confront the situation and decide what to do, what measures to take, and how to employ the remaining time instead of using treatments with no or any effects that in turn worsen the patients life quality.