Futility of Care and More Complications to Date

It's always good to have time to get together with your research group, get focused, get everything together, and feel as if your presentation has some sort of direction. The days are counting down now and this Thursday my group will be presenting on the Belmont report. I could be doing prep for this for a month and still be nervous, even though we're only presenting in front of our peers. One group, however, presented today and they did pretty well! The Tuskegee study is infamous in the mistrust it has created between doctors and certain groups in America (which is discouraging) as well as for all the men who could have received treatment. Watching them present, though, makes me feel as if its not going to be so bad after all. Waiting to present is always the worst part.

The one and only Dr. Epright!

Did I ever mention that death isn't simple to define? A one syllable word yet it is so complicated to define, especially when those one-in-a-million cases are the ones that are always on the news and make it more complicated for the general public, and myself, to understand. I always enjoy Dr. Epright's discussions but they leave me so frustrated! Two cases that we covered with her today were those of Marlise Munoz and Jahi McMath. First, the Munoz case was what frustrated me the most. I understand that many people have a different opinion of what constitutes life after conception and during pregnancy but for the life of me why couldn't the state have simply followed her advanced directive to be taken off of life support? Her husband did win when it was taken to court but the baby was only fourteen weeks old and it was proven that it would not survive till delivery. Do the mother's decisions not matter that she made in life? I could rant for pages on this subject probably but for the sake of keeping my blog posts at a reasonable size I'll restrain myself.

The weirdest thing that happened to day, and possibly so far during Tier III, was that during Dr. Epright's talk on Jahi McMath Lauren found an article posted early this morning that McMath was pronounced "healthy" and her body was producing hormones and going through puberty. There are an incredible amount of complications that come with this news: the public validity of a doctor's declaration of death, the future of patient/surrogate choice in matters of care, etc... Many things are going to come out of this case and others like it so keeping an eye on it in the future will be important.

Second to last day in bibliotherapy this afternoon! Today was probably my favourite day in bibliotherapy. I was stationed at Greenville Place and I enjoyed the staff and residents there so much! They all had so many interesting stories to tell and many of them had traveled which I enjoyed talking about! There are so many interesting stories that they have to tell that you would never know just by looking at them. One issue that I have noticed though is that many patients think that we want something from them and are just collecting data; especially when they see our Dose Of Prose books. Im not sure if this has affected how long some of them want to talk to me or not but it certainly is something that I've discussed with other people in my tier. I feel as if I don't read too much from the books at all and even though the make a good conversation starter Im not sure how necessary they are to the betterment of the patients. I feel as if most patients just want to be heard and for us to listen.

- Morning Drive-In Jam - ***

Chaiyya Chaiyya - Malaika Arora

Kudi Gujarat Di - Jasbir Jassi

*** Today Tyler, Shivali, Shreya, and I all carpooled to Greenville place together. Shivali and Shreya were playing Bollywood music in the car and it was jammin! It kinda influenced by drive home music too.

Suggested books and articles:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/03/21/jahi-mcmath-pronounced-dead-years-ago-healthy-new-photo-claims/82082798/

http://healthcarecomm.org/about-us/impact-of-communication-in-healthcare/

#MedExTierIII