Biomedical subjects

Faith Fitzgerald

Publications and source records attributed to Faith Fitzgerald.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

An academic clinician's perspective on the care of the geriatric patient.

This paper discusses the role that the personal history plays in a patient's perception of his or her own illness in the light of the patient's own personal history. It demonstrates the regrettable modern tendency to regards the patient as the "bearer of a disease" rather than as a human being with personal values and experiences into which their current illness needs to be integrated. I illustrate my point by an exchange between a student and an "attending" and the "attending" and the patient. It represents only one out of unfortunately many such instances in which the pressures of "managed care" and "efficiency" have made truly knowing the patient as an individual with life experiences and personal values much more difficult.

Aged↗

PubMed2004

Advance directives in an academic setting: what should residents be taught?

In this paper I wish to introduce a short description of the US medical educational system and show how various types of Advance Directives can be used in the educational process. The danger is that these documents will become one more thing to be gotten out of the way so that no real discussion takes place. In summation, many academic teaching hospitals, and their faculty are asked to teach residents and students about advance directives, but it is often done in a formulaic way, because the nature of the doctors, the patients, and the medical care system impede true inquiry into the fundamental question which makes an advance directive valuable and legitimate: how can we help this person either live or die in a way that is both medically feasible and closest to their desires?

Advance Directives↗

PubMed2004

An academic internist looks at euthanasia.

This paper points out that to persons unfamiliar with the context and suffering of dying patients, their loved ones, and last, but by no means least, the health care team can only discuss the very concrete question of euthanasia in an abstract way unaware of the fact that this question must, in the final analysis, be differently addressed in different specific patients and under specific circumstances. This paper poses questions which must be addressed and will rarely find a good answer but at least the best among a series of unpalatable options. It again points out the important and legitimate place that emotions play in decision-making.

Attitude↗

PubMed2003

Principalism at the bed-side.

Using an actual case, this paper examines a number of ways in which physicians deal with such a case and with the various "principles" and ethical theories to which they are apt to appeal. It goes on to suggest that using Dewey's method of solving problems is most applicable at the bed-side.

Aged↗