Jane Doe
06/29/2009
Sec. 51&52
Inhumane Treatment of Patients

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross speaks of different scenarios of death, which leads up to the point of her essay. She discusses the history of epidemics and the creation of vaccinations that lead to prevention. Our world of medicine has greatly increased over the years and helped people live longer lives. “The number of old people is on the rise, and with this fact come the number of people with malignancies and chronic diseases associated more with old age.” (136) There has been a significant increase in modern medicine and better education, our healthcare industry has a better understanding of how to treat illnesses that we didn’t have much knowledge of decades ago. Elisabeth wants us to understand her view on old-fashioned customs: “I think they are an indication of our acceptance of a fatal outcome, and they help the dying patient as well as his family to accept the loss of a loved one.” (139) She feels that the more advancements being made in science, the more we fear and deny the reality of death, which I couldn’t agree on more. When health providers are caring for patients in a hospital they are just thinking of doing their job which is to prolong death, or put it off a little while longer. They detach themselves from the patients and only know their chart and important medical history, not their life story. They want to treat them, and get them discharged as quickly as possible so another patient can take their bed. Hospitals nowadays are filled with patients and the capacity is often overflowing. Elisabeth describes how people have long discussions about whether patients should even be told the truth. “One of the most important facts is that dying nowadays is more gruesome in many ways, namely, more lonely, mechanical, and dehumanized; at times it is even hard to determine when the time of death has occurred.” (141) Elisabeth’s main point is that when a patient is severely ill and in the hospital they have no right to their opinion anymore. They are not thought of as a human with feelings, opinions, and emotions. They are thought of as a patient that they must fight to save. The patient wants to speak and ask questions, but often they can’t -or won’t- be heard. She questions if this approach is our way of coping with and repressing the anxieties that a terminally or critically ill patient evoke in us. She wonders if our concentration on medical equipment is our attempt to deny the impending death. We don’t want to face the frightening and painful reality of a