A new study has been released and appears to indicate that doctors tend to receive different levels of end of life care than the general population. In particular, it indicated that doctors receive less aggressive levels of care when it comes to prolonging life particularly in the last six months of life.The authors suspect that is the doctor’s knowledge of the realities of warding away death for short periods and instead opt to plan ahead and make sure they are not made to suffer to prolonging the inevitable. Interestingly, lawyers were also shown to chose similar paths to doctors when making end of life decisions which the researchers conjectured was due to their high level of education and tendency to clearly set out their goals and intent when making arrangements concerning end of life medical care. All this goes to show that education about the realities of end of life medical treatment is essential in allowing a person to make an informed decision about what lengths should be gone to in order to prolong their life.
See Andrew M. Seaman, Doctors get less aggressive care before death, Reuters, January 19, 2016.
