[Sent – 6 May 2019 to the 170+ surgeons et al of our Surgical Ethics (Education) Consortium]
Greetings from St. Louis and WashU. For my ‘Surgical Ethics Education Resources -- #16’ communication, I have inserted below two PowerPoint slides I used a couple of weeks ago as part of an ethics education session with the ethics committee for a community hospital that I chair. The two slides suggest a rather sharp contrast between surgeons and their patients re whether death is perceived as a natural part of the life cycle. The responses tabulated in the two slides were gathered from WashU surgery residents a few years ago as a discussion starter for an ethics education conference. I suspect the contrast revealed in their responses is present to some degree among your surgery residents. After presenting the tabulations, as I recall we weaved two discussion threads into the presentation of a series of illustrative cases – i.e., (1) What does it mean not to view death as a natural part of the life cycle? and (2) How does this perception of death shape the end-of-life decision-making of patients and their families who hold this perception? We welcome your feedback. Doug
