Medical Information Issue

The issue of whether to reveal to a terminally ill or potentially terminally ill the exact nature of a prognosis is a matter of controversy not only in the medical community but also in the wider society. Among the most bleak judgments of the whole area of what could be called the social aspects of life and death is offered by Bauman, who says (20) that the promises of high-tech medicine have so overtaken popular imagination that the culture as a whole has not the ability to respond to the direct experience of death--whether that of themselves or their loved ones. In this view, it would make sense for the doctor to conceal a negative prognosis from everyone and hold out false hope of recovery, based on the heroic intervention of technology in Mrs. Pericolo's possible malignant abdominal cancer.

But of course such a simplistic answer would be entirely unsatisfactory to both patient and her children.

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, Wolf, et al., note with respect to interpretation of patient treatment directives that "family members or other intimates can help" provide accurate interpretation of a patient's intentions regarding terminal care. "Even a vague directive will usually provide some guidance" (1668). In other words, the affirmative obligation of Updyke to engage in a sustained dialogue with Mrs. Pericolo can legitimately be supplemented by such dialogue with her children. Making an informed judgment about disclosure to a cancer patient entails an acknowledgment of that patient's right to know, which in recent years has assumed importance in medical discourse. From one point of view, some level of disclosure seems unavoidable where the possibility of surgery seems likely. Consider the fact that hospitals require patients to make informed consent to an operation or other procedure (Hospital Form 15). It is to be expected that a typical consent form would oblige patients to acknowledge that a variety of conditions, including malignancies, might exist in their case and that the authorization for treatment options would be spelled out in some detail. Therefore just the administrative aspects of a course of treatment, whatever the content of the prognos
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Cancer Center, Self-Determination Act, Laine Davidoff, Dr Updyke's, , Hospital Form, Accordingly Katz, Hippocratic Oath, Pericolo Updyke's, Dr Updyke, information patient, affirmative obligation, physical condition, negative prognosis, course treatment, direct experience, patient-centered medicine, terminally ill, physician patient, harm patient, obligation physician patient, consent operation procedure, directly patient updyke, patient self-determination act,
Approximate Word count = 2208
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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