Word: physicians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...physician likes to view himself as an individual totally responsible for the care of his patients and a free agent in arriving at decisions. Individuality is important, and I shall return to it later, but the kind of individual responsibility which the physician assumes he has is shared with many others. For the facts are that medicine has become infinitely more complex, and no physician can provide all the benefits of modern medicine by himself. Like it or not, he is dependent upon others, and a laboratory error by a technician in a remote corner of the hospital...
...delighted to read TIME'S Essay on the family physician [May 13]. For years the American Academy of General Practice has been telling this story to medical educators, but our words have fallen on deaf ears. We do not advocate the family doctor of 50 years ago, but a bright, modern family physician well trained in comprehensive medicine, and schooled in those attributes so well described in your Essay. Though it is true that most modern medical knowledge is best applied in the hospital and office, there are many instances when the house call is most useful, convenient...
...When the physician decides to support the patient with mechanical aids after the EEG has gone flat, says Surgeon Charles F. Zukoski III of the VA Hospital in Nashville, he runs the risk of letting the machine become his master. Slowly but inexorably, the blood pressure will fall until it can no longer support the kidneys or other viral organs. "This," says Dr. Zukoski, "is an agonal type of death. We can carry the prolongation of so-called life...
...must remain flat for about 24 hours, and stay flat despite external stimuli such as a loud noise. There must be no muscular or pupillary reflexes; the patient must have no heartbeat or respiration of his own-only what the machines are providing. "After that," says Dr. Schwab, "the physician in charge can agree to turn off the artificial aids and pronounce the patient dead...
...long the EEG must remain flat depends on circumstances. After barbiturate poisoning or long exposure to extreme cold, a patient might have a flat EEG for several hours and still be capable of full recovery. Dr. Schwab would leave the precise timing to the physician's judgment in each case...