Not dead, just on vacation

The joy of locum tenens work is that I can, actually, take a vacation. I have been working a lot, and so now I am going to be away from anything that begets blogs about medical care for most of a month. I will be singing polyphonic music in the Republic of Georgia and canoeing, briefly, in the Skagit River. I will miss the doctoring, but only a little bit. I will then return and jump right back in, with both feet.

I might write another blog while I am in foreign lands, but probably not, so I'm guessing I'll be checking in again sometime in early October.

Comments

bdur said…

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/opinion/keller-how-to-die.html?hp Janice, I didn't want you to miss this - right up your alley, I should think.

October 7, 2012 at 9:55 PM

Janice Boughton said…

Interesting article. It talks about the UK's Liverpool care pathway, which is similar to our hospital's comfort care process and other hospitals' palliative care consulting team's approach. The author says that the Liverpool approach would be unthinkable in the US, but that's not actually true. All of the hospitals I have worked in have some sort of comfort care option but the hospitals' cultures vary quite a bit when it comes to the point at which the option to not do more interventions is raised with the patient and family. Some people really would not want to have dialysis or be put on a ventilator, even if it would prolong their life, and would prefer to die naturally without going through a miserable nursing home stage, but are never really offered that option.

October 9, 2012 at 11:29 PM

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