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I'm not in entire agreement with this last sentence. The doctor isn't always wise, altruistic or all 'knowing'. Just review the foundation that's currently being discussed. Doctors can and have gone to great lengths to cover up a mistake; not saying that is the case here but it happens. Doctor's need some oversight from time to time as well and other doctors are often unwilling to question a peer.
I'm not sure about the lawyer in THIS case or the judge in THIS case - but should I have a dispute with a medical facility or provider - a lawyer sure does come in handy.
I have no problem with legal oversight of quality. I do have a problem with legal intervention in actual treatment decisions.
I know I haven't read anything to the effect of "we're waiting for the heart to stop beating" from the parents or the lawyer. Have I missed something?
Because in the absence of that (which I might...MIGHT...see as a sign of legit religious beliefs), and at the risk of being gross, the parents are basically watching over a liquefying corpse. And possibly letting others experiment on the body. Any notion of any form whatsoever of 'recovery' has long since passed, I feel stupid even re-stating that as it seems achingly obvious. I can't imagine grieving a lost child at all never mind one who would be putrifying before me.
I struggle to see any positive individual or social benefit from this continuing.
I've been wondering, too. Will we know if they finally decide to bury her? Will we still be talking about her 6 months from now, wondering at what stage her corpse is?
When I worked in a hospital, I did work closely with both the Case Manager and the Risk Manager who analyzed outcomes, percentages of complications (including deaths), etc. They presented this information to the administration and the doctors, and each doctor received reports as to their statistics. It was a cardiac center, and so certain doctors had a higher rate of complications due to their willingness to surgically treat higher risk patients.
This is why the push to grade doctors on outcomes and penalize them for readmission of patients soon after discharge for a previous hospital stay is so hazardous.
if your outcome data is worsened by treating sicker patients, who on earth would want to treat very sick patients?
Also, the doctors and hospitals have no control over the patient's compliance with the discharge plan.
This is irrelevant to the current thread, but it is another example of how government meddling in medical decision making is not improving health care.
That is just sad. What Jahi's mother is clearly demonstrating is the Babinski reflex. In an adult, the toes lifting in response to touch on the bottom of the foot is abnormal. It indicates that certain signals from the brain are missing. The muscle response comes from the spinal cord, not the brain.
"The Babinski sign can indicate upper motor neuron lesion constituting damage to the corticospinal tract. Occasionally, a pathological plantar reflex is the first (and only) indication of a serious disease process and a clearly abnormal plantar reflex often prompts detailed neurological investigations, including CT scanning of the brain or MRI of the spine, as well as lumbar puncture for the study of cerebrospinal fluid."
In other words, the video just confirms brain damage. It does not refute it.
I'm not in entire agreement with this last sentence. The doctor isn't always wise, altruistic or all 'knowing'. Just review the foundation that's currently being discussed. Doctors can and have gone to great lengths to cover up a mistake; not saying that is the case here but it happens. Doctor's need some oversight from time to time as well and other doctors are often unwilling to question a peer.
I'm not sure about the lawyer in THIS case or the judge in THIS case - but should I have a dispute with a medical facility or provider - a lawyer sure does come in handy.
Ringo1,
You make some good points. I appreciate how carefully you were to clarify "this specific lawyer and judge" in this case. The legal experts who have been following this would know more about how frequently an attorney/judge team like we saw in Oakland can do what those two did. I hope this is rare.
Every state has a process to review any physician, or regulated practitioner. Sometimes those can be personal vendettas, sometimes the licensing boards need to intervene and often an investigation yields nothing. But it's important everyone understands they can take action independently as well.
Yes, I agree, there are times an attorney must be retained, when Federal and State Laws appear to have been broken. I don't want to comment on Personal Injury for many reasons. Instead I'll say I think it is good patients/families or guardians can seek legal representation if they feel their care was not the Community Standard or they were harmed by treatment.
Overall, I think most practitioners I've encountered have tried to provide the best care they can of others.
MSR
Last edited by Mtn. States Resident; 01-29-2014 at 02:47 PM..
Reading the facebook page it seems the folks still haven't grasped the difference between brain death and coma or brain injury. There are a slew of links to stories that claim fish oil can heal the brain but on reading them in each and every case the person was in a coma or suffering from brain injury not brain death.
Until people understand the difference the confusion will persist. They are also still asking for monetary contributions to the gofundme site which seems to have stalled at $59,000.
At least in this article, he seems to be set on deliberately misstating the facts and misleading his readers. I don't ascribe to his belief that we should accommodate irrational beliefs on the part of the family beyond say, travel time for loved ones to come say goodbye.
That doesn't mean I believe in cruelty to the family, though. In 2001, my mother was hospitalized due to undiagnosed Wegener's Granulomatosis, an autoimmune vasculitis. At one point, while she was in the ICU, her odds were assessed at 10% chance of survival. The doctors, for the most part, respected our wishes to have only positive things said in her presence, even though she was sedated for the ventilator. Those who didn't, well, we called them on it. Certain doctors are fond of the brutal honesty method, which is tantamount to cruelty ("she's absolutely going to die here").
To be clear, the family conferenced with her doctors regularly during her stay in the hospital (including the 3 weeks in the ICU), and they told us honestly (but kindly) what was going on, and what might happen. We agreed to a DNR because of the severity of her disease, and her osteoporosis. Ultimately, she recovered, spent some time in a rehab hospital, and eventually home. But we held no irrational beliefs, and we forced no one else to accommodate such irrationality.
Dr. Lazenby is a nurse practitioner. His doctorate is in theology. He is not a physician, and his nursing expertise is not in otolaryngology.
He repeats the misinformation that it was a "routine" tonsillectomy, asserts that the hospital should have supported their religious beliefs, and states that doing so might have made it possible for Jahi's parents to accept her death, then goes on to quite loftily say, "More important, the healthcare professionals involved might have realized that they do not have power over life and death."
Unbelievable!
He has been taken to task by several posters who pointed out that the surgery was not routine and that the hospital went to extreme lengths to support this family, including pastoral counselling --- which the family rejected. One person even knows the minister, whom she describes as compassionate and dedicated. That chaplain apparently attends every death at the hospital.
Dr. Lazenby should have kept his fingers off the keyboard. He has contributed nothing to the discussion.
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