Over the seven years I have worked in medicine, I have witnessed hundreds of deaths, mainly in older patients, but also in younger ones.
I’ve seen a lot of needless suffering, severely ill people flogging their bodies to death with different treatments or more chemo in pursuit of something that is never going to happen — possibly just to please their families. (…)
And there has to be dignity in death. I have led crash teams, done chest compression, seen hundreds of people being resuscitated.
It is not like Casualty on TV — it’s brutal, undignified, a horrible process with only a small percentage surviving. Why would a seriously-ill person want their body pummelled like that?
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Doctors choose to die differently than their patients. Take the hint.
