As I scribbled all over the paper in my frustration, I couldn’t believe they were misleading all the public with this. I decided that I would hold my thoughts and not speak up. I can always blog it. But then, a lawyer gets up and goes over the article he wrote and by the end of it, he had a gentleman stand up and say, “How can we get rid of the Texas Advanced Directive Acts of 1999.” Many in the audience asked, “Why have we not heard about this”.
Well, I would like to set some things straight from my perspective. In my opinion, the attorney, Mr. Painter, did not represent the case he used in the article and at the meeting, or the facts surrounding ethics reviews well.
- First, I did not hear him disclose that he is suing Memorial Hermann for medical malpractice in this specific case. I think it is a critical omission that would allow the attendees to know his perspective. I did not find out this critical piece of information until I looked up the case on the internet after arriving home.
- Second, he said that a 14 year old went in for a minor surgery. When I researched the name of the patient that he gave, Sabrina Martin, I found a very one-sided article in the Houston Press, which quoted the lawyer extensively. They report that the girl had a brain abscess from a sinusitis infection and had a craniotomy. She was transferred from another hospital who thought she had a tumor but either way, I would not call that minor surgery and this abstract maintains that the mortality rate, even in these modern times, is still high at 10{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986}. Think about that. Truth is there are bad outcomes which can occur through no fault of the medical field.
But none of that matters as much as the fact that he appears to be a trial lawyer suing the health care system and raising the cost of healthcare and talking about the “unintended consequence of tort reform in Texas” at a Republican forum that purports to want tort reform and blames the trial lawyers for a huge part of the healthcare problem. Does that make sense to you? It doesn’t to me.
What that trial lawyer, and by extension the Harris County Republican Party, was engaged in was scaremongering.
Now to better represent this law that few have heard of. Few have heard of it because it is not a problem and in point of fact is a very good law.
- The law does not give end of life decisions to the government or bureaucrats. Instead there is a multi-discipline healthcare team, with social workers, ethicists, and family representation that discuss the issues at hand.
- One of the designs of the law is to prevent a family from making a physician, nurse or hospital do what they believe is not in the patient’s best interest or causes the patient needless harm and suffering without benefit. Believe it or not, most of us got into this field because we care about people and patients!
- Most of the time the patient is unable to say what they would want at these critical junctures so the family often is grabbing at straws to hang on to hope, which is fine as long at the physician and medical team agree with the treatment plan.
- Remember: Only a physician can determine a treatment plan, not a family, and sometimes they insist on things that cause the patient pain so they can hold on to hope.
- It allows the family time (10 days, which is more than adequate if you pick up the phone and start working on it) to find some other facility or doctor to transfer care to since the physician that is currently attending does not believe that it is in the patient’s best interest (and yes, this does happen; I was at a facility that accepted one of these cases, so you can see the law works).
Families, lawyers and the media should not be able to keep a physician or medical facility hostage to continue care that in their professional opinion causes more harm than good. In many cases the family wants to insist that the patient remain at the hospital for the rest of their life on a ventilator without any responsibility to the patient. Uugghh! If you see my frustration, it is because you would have to see what I see to know what a few people will do in the name of “right to life”.
The thing that I often say that makes the more sensible take notice and make better decisions is, “don’t do to your loved one, what you would not want done to you!”
For all that will say we are playing God, I will tell you what makes you think God can’t heal without our help? I will also point to a few cases that when we did start withdrawing all the advanced life support, the patient lived. Sometimes, maybe less is better.
(Note: This particular guest post was written by my wife. Apparently, some in the HCRP think that it was wrong for her to stand up during citizen questions and challenge this lawyer because of our relationship. I do not agree with them and learned a long time ago that strong, independent women are for me. The video below is her statement and question, along with the trial lawyer’s response. I would like you to take note of his description of “economic incentives”. Regardless of your position on the Texas Advance Directives Act, is that what you want the Republican Party to represent?)
{vimeo}6831166{/vimeo}