Announcements

Hi everyone! I hope you aren't all TOO bogged down with midterms and the presentation. It's almost break! Here's our NE #9:

Decisions surrounding life-sustaining treatments for patients during end-of-life care are usually dictated by the patient's well-communicated wishes. Often, the patient has not communicated wishes, or their wishes were not communicated clearly. In these cases, surrogates typically end up asking doctors to do everything possible to keep the patient alive. Check out this very interesting ethics article I found (on my site under Paper Links):

http://coursestreet.com/nrsc2100_greene/paperlinks.nfo

Craft a response to this article that could include answers to these questions:

What should be the role of the physician during end-of-life care decision making if the patient's wishes are unknown? Should the doctor give his or her opinion to the family/surrogate? What other resources should be available to the patient's surrogate to help them make decisions? Are there any instances you can think of when a surrogate should choose to direct treatments away from the patient's communicated wishes?

Responses due Sunday, November 13th.