Coda Alliance : "Don't Let My Mother Die!"

"Don't Let My Mother Die!"
Responding to Requests for
Non-Beneficial Treatment

Presented by Coda Alliance and
O'Connor Hospital Chaplain Services
October 20, 2005. 8 am to 12:30 pm

You can view the slides of the presentation by Dr Pattison and by Fr Basil Royston (it might talke a while to download, depending on the speed of your connection):
View Slides (PDF format, 630 KB)

In the practice of modern medicine, clinicians frequently receive requests from patients and families for treatment that the clinician may consider non-beneficial or 'futile.'

Frequently requests for non-beneficial treatment occur in the setting of advanced illness. Hospital physicians, Intensivists, Palliative care consultants, ethics committees, and chaplains may be called upon to address these requests or to assist in addressing them in the course of developing an appropriate plan of care.

This workshop provided an approach to dealing with patients and families requesting non-beneficial treatment, including:

• a differential diagnosis of the situations that frequently underlie these requests
• approaches to discussing the concept of hope and appropriate responses to the request not to take away hope

Featured Guest Presenter:
Marilyn Pattison, MD

Marilyn Pattison, MD, trained and experienced as an internist and nephrologist, has been with the Franciscan Health System Tacoma for the last 13 years. For most of that time she has been chair of the Franciscan Health System Ethics Committee, and is presently their Medical Director for Palliative Medicine Services. Since 1998 she is medical director for the Franciscan Improving Care Through the End of Life Program, which received the Circle of Life Award in 2000 and the AMG/Pfizer Model of Excellence Award in 2001.