How Physicians Should and Shouldn’t Talk With Dying Patients
Hospitals should require patients to give explicit informed consent before physicians are authorized to discuss life-and-death matters with them offsite via technology
Co-authored with Arthur Caplan
On March 3, 78-year-old Ernest Quintana was admitted to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center’s emergency department in Fremont, California. Quintana was suffering from lung disease; it was the third time he had been admitted to the hospital in 15 days. As his granddaughter Annalisia Wilharm stood by his bedside, a machine on wheels with an attached digital screen rolled into Quintana’s room. A live-streaming image of a doctor in a remote location appeared on the screen to tell the pair that Quintana didn’t have long to live.
While Quintana’s family “knew he was dying of chronic lung disease,” they weren’t expecting him to die imminently and in the hospital. While repeating aloud what the remote physician was saying to her hard-of-hearing grandfather, Wilharm had to be corrected. She suggested the next step might be “going to hospice at home,” but the physician told them he didn’t think Quintana would make it that far. He died in the hospital the next day.
