Physicians need to manage expectations and clearly explain the prognosis of ICU patients to their families, particularly when the outcome is a negative one.
Physicians should ensure that overwhelmed young patients receive the psychological support they need, especially when recommending optional treatments following the grueling main treatment for breast cancer.
Physicians should ensure that overwhelmed young patients receive the psychological support they need, especially when recommending optional treatments following the grueling main treatment for breast cancer.
Physicians have an obligation to consider a patient’s quality of life when making treatment decisions and should consider giving patients the options of withholding or withdrawing aggressive treatment if that treatment will not restore the kind of life the patient finds meaningful.
Invention of the stethoscope in 1816 changed the patient-physician relationship. Technology, widely used in medicine today, is not a substitute for the physician’s human understanding of the patient’s life.