The television drama ER has been delivering excellent stories around death and dying as well as the misadventures of the walking wounded for fifteen years now. After a long break, I have returned to faithfully follow it’s final season and it has not disappointed. The plot and multiple story lines of ER are quite complex and unfold over weeks so serendipity was probably the cause for last night’s episode to deal with the topic of kidney disease and kidney transplants on World Kidney Day. As I discussed in Wednesday’s post, the purpose of World Kidney Day is to increase awareness. The aim is to prevent chronic kidney disease by encouraging people to make choices that support healthy kidneys and get appropriate screening test for kidney function when necessary.

more about “The Story of a Kidney“, posted with vodpod

Yet, here at enBloom, we try to foster a culture of information that will empower the choices you make regarding your health and medical decisions. In an earlier post (Valentine’s Day/National Donor Day), I brought the importance of organ donation to your attention. In this ER episode, a family member struggles to come to a decision regarding organ donation. In my continuous quest to advocate for your autonomy as a patient. I encourage you to talk often and openly with your loved ones about your decision to be an organ donor. These are agonizing decisions for loved ones to make especially in the midst of grieving. Moreover, often the best candidates for organ donation were young, healthy, in-the-prime-of their-lives but just happen to roll into the ER on the heels of some traumatic and tragic event. By communicating and documenting your end-of-life decisions, you remove a great burden from the shoulders of your loved ones.

Enjoy this compelling episode of ER which so aptly illustrates all the emotions and the drama of life in kidney failure and organ donation.

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In the NYTimes.com article, In Search of a Good Doctor, Pauline Chen, MD surveys several fellow doctors to provide health care consumers and patients with guidance on selecting physicians but more importantly navigating health information available on the internet. She states:

And according to several of the doctors I spoke with, the amount of information available to patients will only increase in the future.

Throughout our conversations and e-mail exchanges, every one of the doctors stressed the importance of patients doing research and becoming an active part of the medical team. “This is a shared responsibility between the physician and the patient for the patient’s health,” said Dr. Ted Epperly, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Dr. Lisa V. Rubinstein, president of the Society of General Internal Medicine, said that sharing in decision-making “will help raise the quality of care given by any clinician, because it will sharpen the focus on the key decision points and help the clinician put a plan in place that the patient understands and agrees with.”

It is very encouraging to hear more and more doctors supporting active patient participation in care. Such an atmosphere maximizes patient autonomy as well as the level of respect with which care is delivered.

Source:

In Search of a Good Doctor (Chen, P. (2009, January 8). In Search of A Good Doctor. [Electronic Version] The New York Times.)

December began with the 20th annual observance of World AIDS Day. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post ran articles discussing the potential benefits of mandatory testing in curbing the incidence (new cases) and prevalence (all existing cases) of the disease. The Washington Post article focused on implementing such a policy in the United States while the New York Times article examined an international perspective. Our Constitution constantly forces us to balance the rights of the individual against the rights of citizens collectively. It endows each of us (even those with disease) with the right to privacy. In addition, principles of bioethics state we also have the right to autonomy. That is, the right to to accept or refuse medical treatment for ourselves. The Post article used bird flu as a disease for comparison. Yet, the fact that, HIV (which causes AIDS) does not have the ability to infect people through casual contact seems to significantly diminish the argument for mandatory testing. Such a mandatory testing policy would violate individual rights to autonomy and privacy of health information. More importantly, well designed health communication campaigns for volunteer testing and aggressive preventive techniques could transform the culture regarding AIDS in America without sacrificing the rights of individuals.

Read the Our Country is Failing the AIDS Test from the Washington Post and A Breathtaking Aspiration for AIDS from the New York Times.