Family Medicine: Mock Ethics Committee

This morning was a slow morning. There was a period of about 1 hour where we had only 1-2 patients come in; Dr. RR even had time to engage in a game of Connect Four with a 10-year-old patient (her mom comes in for Matrix treatment for carpal tunnel; they're really fun people to talk to) without worrying about another patient coming in. The little girl told me that she got to dissect an owl pellet in class the other day; I did the exact same experiment at her age =P Dr. RR had to get to a meeting by noon, but at 11:45 he still had two patients to see (the last few decided to crowd in all at once), a pap and a well child. I saw the well-child while he did the pap; fortunately the kid was healthy with no problems so it was a quick visit.

This afternoon we had a mock ethics committee with Dr. M at school. We were told to split into groups and "roleplay" what would actually happen at an ethics committee based on the case we were assigned. I was in a group featuring "Mr. B," an elderly man in chronic respiratory failure who wanted to be taken off the ventilator and go into comfort care, but the hospital refused b/c it went against their Christian beliefs to preserve the sanctity of life. My group managed to throw something together and I was given the role of Mr. B's PCP, where I argued on his behalf that he be allowed to choose how to live the remainder of his life. Lori and Jeff W stole the show with Lori acting as Mr. B's Southern-accented, smart-talking lawyer and Jeff being "Mr. Hospital," or the hospital people advocating to keep Mr. B on the ventilator. The other group, which debated whether or not a Hispanic girl with AML should be forced to get a BMT, did an excellent job too, with Deanna and Jacob speaking Spanish to each other as the girl and her father to make the case more realistic: interpreters are very important in health care, after all.