Doctors often get less intense care than patients: Study

A new study has in fact found that doctors end up receiving less intense care than patients. After comparing  2,396 doctors and 665,579 members of the general public aged 66 and above, and who died between 2004 and 2005 in four states in US, researchers found doctors received less intense care. Lead author Joel Weissman, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and his research team analysed services received in the last six months of life, including surgery, hospice care, intensive care, and whether the person died in a hospital.

Overall, the doctors received less aggressive care. About 28 percent of them died in a hospital, compared to 32 percent of the general population. About 25 percent of doctors had surgery in the last six months of life, compared to about 27 percent of the general public. And about 26 percent of doctors were admitted to intensive care units in the last months of life, versus about 28 percent of the general population. 

“Doctors understand (that) modern medicine can both help and harm people, especially at the end of life, and they understand its limits,” said Weissman. The researchers also compared the doctors to 2,081 similarly aged lawyers who died around the same time, since lawyers and physicians tend to have similar educations and similar social and economic statuses. Other than lawyers being more likely to die in hospitals, the two groups received similar levels of care at the end of life.

“What this says is that there is something about occupation and socioeconomic status that influences end-of-life care, but doctors still tend to receive less intensive end-oflife care,” said Weissman. 

The similarities between end of life care for the two professions may also be due to the fact that lawyers have helped clients with end-of-life planning, like estate planning and do-not-resuscitate orders, said Dr VJ Periyakoil of Stanford School of Medicine, California, who was not involved in the study.