cheryl
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Staff member
A Good Life And A Good Death: What Is Palliative Care? - NPR
"He will not die on your watch."
That's what the family of a patient told Sunita Puri when she was a resident in internal medicine. They were chilling words for the young doctor as she took over the care of a very sick man on the overnight shift.
To Puri, the patient, who had widespread metastatic liver cancer, appeared to be dying. She tried to talk with the family about forgoing heroic measures, to let him have peace in his last hours. But they were adamant.
"Do everything," they told her. Hours after admitting him to the intensive care unit, she was overseeing chest compressions to revive him after his heart stopped. "I was blinking back tears," she recalls. The man died that night.
"He will not die on your watch."
That's what the family of a patient told Sunita Puri when she was a resident in internal medicine. They were chilling words for the young doctor as she took over the care of a very sick man on the overnight shift.
To Puri, the patient, who had widespread metastatic liver cancer, appeared to be dying. She tried to talk with the family about forgoing heroic measures, to let him have peace in his last hours. But they were adamant.
"Do everything," they told her. Hours after admitting him to the intensive care unit, she was overseeing chest compressions to revive him after his heart stopped. "I was blinking back tears," she recalls. The man died that night.