I followe up on the practice of palliative medicine, how hospital ethics boards deal with palliative care, particularly focussing on cancer and oncology departments, and the role of hospice and nursing homes in the palliative care process.
The central argument of the film is that healthcare professionals are for the most part believe that they can defeat most diseases, and that they consider not being able to fix something a failure on their part. As such, they are not trained well in handling palliative and end-of-life care, prioritizing the patients wishes and dignity over putting up a fight against the disease.
This film suggests that physicians should learn to honor and accept that they need to assist terminal patients to accieve their last desires in whatever time they have. It suggests that doctors could learn alot from palliative care practitioners in how they help patients accept their fate and assist them through the dieing process.
The narrative is sustained through emotional stories of end of life care from both the physician and patient perspectives performed by both Dr. Atul Gawande and by other healthcare professionals such as oncologists, palliative care experts, other surgeons. The scientific background of end of life care isn't really discussed in detail, as this film focuses more on the social and emotional aspects of this topic.
More information on the pathophysiology and disease paths of the terminal illnesses discussed in this film would have increased the educational value and depth of this film.
In this film, three groups of stakeholders are portrayed; doctors, patients, and mortality. The doctors depicted fight a loosing battle against aging, death, and terminal illness like cancer. They need to come to terms with the fact that they can't save everyone and they need to honor their patients wishes for how they want to conduct the end of their lives. The patients need to accept their impending death with the assistance of their doctors and advocate for how they want to conduct the end of their lives. And mortality is an object which is immaterial but ever present, and both doctors and patients need to learn how to grasp with it.
viewpoints pertaining to the legal side of pallative care are not presented in this film. the ideas of medically assisted suicide are very pertinant to palliative and end of life care, but it is not at all discussed in this film.
Emergency responders are not portrayed in this film. This film focuses on long term care and the ethics of dealing with death, hospice, and gravely ill patients.
This film would best address audiances of middle aged people who understand the conditions that result in the films discussions, or health care providers of any age and training who would be faced with the moral and ethical conditions posed in the film.
I found parts of the film where the narrator discusses his father to be particularly compelling, because the treatment course that the father took directly influenced how the narrator sees pallative and end of life care and provided a lense from which to look at the rest of the film.