Abstract
Rescue activities in US acute care settings reaffirm an unspoken belief in an unlimited future for patients, families, clniicians, and the public at large. Reaching for that future erases the patient’s experiences in the present, which can be detrimental to her welfare. A case study is used to illustrate how clinicians’ urgency to reify their faith in the patient’s unlimited future violated her real-world existence.
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Notes
Private conversation with Jos Welie.
See “Facing Death” (2010) for a statement that as technology expands, decision-making around dying will become even more difficult.
It is interesting that both the WHO checklist and the TeamSTEPPS practices are formulaic interruptions. While they are designed to enhance communication and team-building, they are also explicit revisions to existing protocol rather than practices that exist outside established hospital routines. Two interventions that take up time in the present, dignity therapy (Chochinov et al. 2005) and Schwartz center rounds (Lown and Manning, 2010), require staff time of their own, apart from procedural work. They are not designed for patient safety, but rather to enrich the lives of patients and staff.
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Chapple, H.S. Rescue: Faith in the Unlimited Future. Soc 52, 424–429 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-015-9925-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-015-9925-z