as small as a world and as large as alone

4:53pm July 30, 2015

madeofpatterns:

And of course some nurse reblogged that post lecturing me on why we ~have to respect choices~ if someone decides death is preferable to a life of pain.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the point I was making that if you’re really talking about choices *you talk about a range of them*.

Otherwise choice is just a euphemism for refusing treatment for treatable conditions and dying.

Yes that.

And it’s always nurses and doctors who think they have all the answers that ~mere laypeople~ could never understand – and all seem to be indoctrinated in the same direction, somehow.

Oh, and nobody ever talks about how the ~burnout~ that, for instance, ICU and hospice nurses experience, shapes their view of who should live and who should die.  And how maybe we should be looking for signs of PTSD in people who work in these professions, instead of assuming that once they get PTSD (which is what ~burnout~ often means) then their judgement about what happens to patients is ~oh so informed by experience~ rather than informed by fear and burnout and sometimes even wishing that patients would die so they wouldn’t have to witness suffering and death (no it’s not logical but it’s what happens).

And all of that somehow turns into being the ones who ~really understand and care unlike mere mortals~ or something.

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