How Doctors Die | HMS

"On three of five measures of the intensity of end-of-life care, physicians received significantly fewer intensive interventions than the general population.

Overall, physicians were less likely to die in a hospital compared with the general population (27.9 percent vs. 32 percent, respectively), and during the last six months of life they were less likely to have surgery (25.1 percent vs. 27.4 percent) and less likely to be admitted to the ICU (25.8 percent vs. 27.6 percent).

The study was led by Harvard Medical School researchers from the Center for Surgery and Public Health (CSPH) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. The findings appear in the January 19 issue of JAMA, in a special themed issue focusing on end-of-life care.

“Our analysis confirms what we’ve long speculated, which is that physicians, who are more likely to have first-hand experience with the burdens and futility of end-of-life care, are less likely to have surgery or be admitted to the ICU during the last six months of life, or to die in the hospital,” said Joel Weissman, deputy director and chief scientific officer at CSPH and associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School."



How Doctors Die | HMS