Why Doctors Die Differently From Their Patients

It is a fact that physicians die differently from the way their patients die. Physicians have a much smaller tendency to use on themselves, chemotherapy, radical surgery, high dose radiation therapy, and artificial kidney treatment for their own terminal diseases. The reason for that is that they are familiar with the complications and the small recovery rates of many terminal-type treatments available today. And…they just say “NO.” One friend of mine who had been in an intensive care unit for two weeks; the suffering there was so intense that he said if he had it to do, again, he would not consent.

Doctors don't want to die any more than anyone else does. But they usually have talked about the limits of modern medicine with their families. They want to make sure that, when the time comes, no heroic measures are taken. During their last moments, they know, for instance, that they don't want someone breaking their ribs by performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (which is what happens when CPR is done right).

In a 2003 article, Joseph J. Gallo and others looked at what physicians want when it comes to end-of-life decisions. In a survey of 765 doctors, they found that 64% had created an advanced directive—specifying what steps should and should not be taken to save their lives should they become incapacitated. That compares to only about 20%for the general public. (As one might expect, older doctors are more likely than younger doctors to have made "arrangements," as shown in a study by Paula Lester and others.) Often those advanced directives specify that in the case of cardiac arrest, no resuscitation is to be done.

A 2010 study of more than 95,000 cases of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) found that only 8% of patients survived for more than one month. Of these, only about 3% could lead a mostly normal life. If CPR is done in a nursing home, less than 1% survive for 3 months.

Physicians have seen that it is often better to go home for the last weeks of a life than to spend that time in a painful and fruitless attempt to ward off a certain death. Informed physicians realize that having the last weeks at home enjoying their families and the things they enjoy is much better than spending that time in the hospital with needles being stuck into them and undergoing other invasive techniques. (Control click)
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