News, Hospitals Giving 'Death Test' to Seniors (community, mother-in-law, state)
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We had a friend of the family, with terminal cancer, he fell and broke his hip. The doctors talked the family into approving a hip replacement, said it would make him more comfortable, and they agreed. He died about a week later. Should there be a conversation on mortality, at some point? And, what does the patient want if they are of sound mind?
Seniors had better brace themselves: Some US hospitals are now administering the "death test," which estimates their chance of dying over the next 30 days. Invented in Australia, the test weighs 29 different criteria—including blood pressure, respiratory rate, and medical history—to determine whether hospitalization is worthwhile or the patient should return home or go to a hospice, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
My first thought is that people may have a better chance of survival if they avoid the hospital and just go home.
THIS is the big chicken and the egg controversy IMO. The sickest people I know are the ones constantly seeking medical treatment for something. The healthiest are the ones who tell the doctor to keep his fist full of prescriptions and simply work to exercise and eat healthy and let nature handle the rest. The latter includes my 84-year-old father-in-law who is our only surviving parent and still as vibrant and active as he was 10 years ago despite his doctor's insistence he should have been on cholesterol medication decades ago.
No, I have no science to back this up. Only observations and the feeling that too much exposure to doctors can be hazardous to one's health.
It looks to me like they are trying to develop a checklist to be sure they are taking the larger view of overall patient health into consideration rather than just a specialist's view. The list looks like it could also be used by a doctor/hospital to justify not treating a patient aggressively, which I don't think is a bad thing, necessarily.
If you talk to hospice workers, they'll tell you that there is a clear pattern of behaviors/physical symptoms that signal (some) patients are near the end of life and those signs need to be respected, not "treated."
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Another means of evaluating whether someone is ready for the hospice is great. We went through this last summer with a relative age 95 and without that sort of test it was depending on the opinions of several healthcare professionals who disagreed. As it turned out we let her stay (and die) where she was most comfortable, in the adult family home where she had lived the last 12 years and the hospice people went there to see her.
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