Doctors Need to Talk About Death

Cremations are among the cremation services offered in Syracuse, NY. However, before cremations and before death, there should be more conversations by doctors with patients about death.

It might surprise you to know that there are many doctors who are just as uncomfortable talking about death and about dying as many of us are. However, by extending life using costly medications, costly procedures, and costly surgeries that may give only a little more quantity of life, but no quality of life (in fact, many of these medical interventions can reduce the quality of life the patient already has), doctors are doing their patients a disservice.

Author and doctor Atul Gawande addresses this issue in his field in his book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. In his career as a surgeon, he and many of patients had to face the question of what matters most at the end of life.

Dr. Gawande learned to talk to his patients about what mattered to them instead of assuming, as the medical professional, he knew what was best for them. Many doctors take the opposite approach: they assume that what they think is best in terms of medical treatment is what their patients want.

However, much of this assumption comes from not wanting to talk to their patients about the end of life and about death and dying. Dr. Gawande is a staunch advocate for doctors doing just this, to give their patients the end of life they want, with as much quality of life left as is possible.

Dr. Gawande explains what being mortal means and how doctors should approach this absolute fact: “Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?:“

When doctors consider our well-being, even to the end, more than they consider extending our lives – which may not contribute to our well-being – than they are avoiding some of the most important and meaningful conversations about the end of life – a certainty – and death.

By changing their focus and talking about death, doctors can substantially improve the end of life, dying, and death.

If you’d like to know about the cremation services offered in Syracuse, NY, our compassionate and experienced team at Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home, Inc. is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 2601 Milton Ave., Solvay, NY 13209, or you can call us today at (315) 468-2431.