I don't know about children, but when my grandmother was diagnosed with brain cancer, among a long list of other illneses, my family decided not to tell her. They thought she'd be more at ease and in retrospect, she really was blissfully ignorant.[/quote]
Thanks for sharing your experience. I've never been confronted with an ethical dilemma around medical information. It's such an interesting situation to think about...
I have heard stories (I'm not sure if they are true or not) about doctors, years ago, not even informing parents that their newborn was intersex before surgically "correcting" the problem. The idea being, I guess, that the parents would be better off not knowing and the baby would be less traumatized as it grew. When I think about this being true it just sends shivers through my body. Gender identity is such a complex issue... I'm so glad it seems that we, as a society, are becoming more thoughtful about it.
snuffles
Jan 18, 2006 @ 8:34 pm
I'm curious, if a child or teen had cancer and the parents didn't want to tell the child, what would most doctors do?[/quote]
Depends on their age and their mental age. If over (approximately) 13years old, then most of the time we ask the patient if it is OK to give all info-diagnosis, prognosis, etc. to their parents and let the parents decide what to tell them.
Same holds true for elderly patients, esp in cultures where it is universally accepted the person dying is not told they are dying. (However, most of the time, people know when they are dying). By law, we would have to ask the patient's permission first, to only tell their designated loved or DPA (durable power of attonery) their diagnosis, etc. If the patient refused to give persmission, then by law (re: patient autonomy) we are required to tell them.
LittleRed
Jan 23, 2006 @ 1:34 am
This dates back to an earlier post, but I'm really glad that someone mentioned the quint. I remember being horrified while watching the episode that that poor baby was being put through hell. Though I realize that doctors are required to do all that they can for a patient, even when it is hopeless, I think that part of my reaction was based on Izzy's ignorance of the futility of it. She hated the idea of not being able to save Emily's life but also was loath to put the baby through so much trauma, without realizing that no matter what she did she would fail. (I was a little surprised that kind-hearted Izzy didn't bring that point up in her fury at Addison, actually.) My older brother was born prematurely and died after almost two months in an ICU incubator, and I know that it tore my parents apart to see their son go through that. I was disheartened to see that Addison didn't let Emily go in peace with her parents, instead of using her as a teaching tool.
Spaz Cadet
Feb 20, 2006 @ 1:28 pm
Any medically knowledgable people out there know what it is that causes spontaneous orgasms and what, exactly, the surgery is that stops them? Is it a nerve somewhere getting undue pressure? Where? What is going on?
dybryd
Feb 21, 2006 @ 1:25 pm
I don't know much about spontaneous orgasms, but I do know that it's a neurological problem--it sometimes occurs in conjunction with epilepsy.
So, even if Addison is an all-purpose gynecologist/ob-gyn/neonatal/anything to do with va-jay-jays doctor, it still makes no sense that she took the patient. She should have seen a neurological specialist.
Billifan
Feb 22, 2006 @ 3:33 pm
SpazCadet, I found this link that may answer your question.
I thought it is neat that they put this information on the web site - whether or not it is true, not sure (I'm not a doctor and I don't play on on tv or at home). So, if someone has any medical background to uphold or dispute this information, let them speak their piece.
Hope it helps!
Did You Know?
mediabrain
Jun 6, 2006 @ 8:28 pm
Can any of the medical experts tell me more about fellowships?
According to a 2003 newspaper article in the character bios section of the ABC web site, Dr. Webber came back to Seattle Grace from New York in March 2003 when he accepted the position of Chief of Surgery. The article also states that Richard and Ellis were interns together at SGH nearly 3 decades ago and that "after fulfilling his residency at Seattle Grace Dr. Webber moved to New York where he has been training residents while practicing cutting edge surgery ever since."
I take this to mean that Webber has been away from Seattle for 20+ years yet in the Season 2 finale just before Bailey told him that Denny had died, Webber said "did my internship here, my residency,... came back here the minute my fellowship was done. The day they told me I would be chief I was standing right there in that OR. Spent my whole career at this hospital. My whole life."
The discussion we are having on the Bitter Medicine: Gripes/Complaints/Rants thread is if these two statements are inconsistent or contradictory. What is the length of a typical fellowship? I'm guessing that it is less defined than that of an intern or resident. If Richard spent so much time in New York, why would he still consider that he spent his whole career at SGH?
Instead of just assuming that Shonda and Co. screwed up I'm trying to find a justification for these two statements to both be correct. Any thoughts?
3chords
Jun 6, 2006 @ 11:04 pm
In our department (don't want to specify, but it is not surgical), fellowships are typically 3 years long.
Sometimes they are straight medical fellowships, and sometimes they are medical-research fellowships which dump the fellows in research labs. Most teaching hospitals have research institutes inside or affiliated with them. Here, they commonly rotate on a 6 month basis from research to clinical work, and the research is related to their field. Usually they don't have much interest in research unless they have a combined MD/PhD, but they do it to get their names on papers. This is actually a huge failing of the show - today's climate is publish or perish and most of the staff here seems uninterested which is odd. McDreamy, Burke, Bailey and Addison would all most certainly be chasing JAMA papers like chickens without a head.
HotButteredRum
Jun 7, 2006 @ 1:38 am
This is actually a huge failing of the show - today's climate is publish or perish and most of the staff here seems uninterested which is odd. McDreamy, Burke, Bailey and Addison would all most certainly be chasing JAMA papers like chickens without a head.
In the S2 Mark episode, Derek accused Mark of only wanting to work on the boy with elephantitis so that Mark could then write a JAMA paper on it, get published and cover himself in professional glory. So it has come up, only it has come up in a negative way, as a selfishly negative, self serving thing thing for the shows 'bad boys' to do, as opposed to working on medical cases for the purely altruistic reasons of helping sick people get better.
I don't know about Dr Bailey, but is it possible that Burke, Addison and Derek, all of them acknowledged world class incredibly brilliant surgeons, all of them Head of SGH Departments, 2 of them in line for the position of Chief of Surgery, have already gone down the JAMA road and it is the resulting professional glory that they are basking in from their JAMA papers, that leads them to being in such positions of success and authority now? Maybe they have done the JAMA thing, have prospered from it, but are now kinda over it and are just back to the basics of just practicing medicine for no other reason than for the love of it.
YourMom
Jun 7, 2006 @ 9:24 am
I work in medical publishing (including research publications), and I think it's doubtful that any of the surgeons would have a "been there, done that" attitude toward publishing. It IS publish or perish. Especially for Derek and Burke, who are trying to move up to a very high-ranking position. And Bailey, who is still working to establish herself. The only time you can afford to have a meh attitude toward publishing is if you're someone like the chief: already advanced as high as you want to go, already very well-known, and likely near the end of your career.
But watching them write and research papers is extremely boring compared to the excitement of watching McD and his magic hands at work. So it's either suspend disbelief on this relatively minor point in the interest of having an exciting show, or go for ultra-realism and risk being bored out of our minds. I pick #1, so this doesn't bother me at all.
3chords
Jun 7, 2006 @ 1:04 pm
No way.
The Chiefs of the Departments are even more psychotic about publishing than the underlings.
For one, it's a well known phenomenon that they poach patients from the residents when they are "interesting" or "rare." Lately, particularly if somebody presents with a possible novel gene mutation - the Chief will swoop in so they can be first author.
The higher you go, the greater the stakes. If you look at the citation index (in short, how many other papers referred to your paper), you will see that the more senior and prestigious the staff member, the more publishing they have and the higher their citation index is.
Derek and Burke would definitely be publishing regularly, we are talking several times a year.
And JAMA is a piece of crap when it comes to research anyway, NEJM is a bit better, but the golden calf are Science, Cell and Nature. None of them would get published there based solely on clinical observations, however. But it is seen as the ultimate in research publishing success.
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