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Man told he's dying via robot video link


Eldorado

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A doctor in California told a patient he was going to die using a robot with a video-link screen.

Ernest Quintana, 78, was at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont when a doctor - appearing on the robot's screen - informed him that he would die within a few days.

A family friend wrote on social media that it was "not the way to show value and compassion to a patient".

Full report at the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47510038

At the Denver Post: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/03/08/ernest-quintana-doctor-robot-video/

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How very convenient for the doctor...who's so important and busy.  Dontcha know.

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34 minutes ago, The Wistman said:

How very convenient for the doctor...who's so important and busy.  Dontcha know.

As long as the checks keep coming from the drug companies and insurance companies he doesn't give a ****.

The primary reasons socialized medicine doesn't work. People are greedy dicks.  

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51 minutes ago, The Wistman said:

How very convenient for the doctor...who's so important and busy.  Dontcha know.

We don’t know that side of the story, and we shouldn’t expect it to be made public either.

I doubt the majority of remote doctors like this part of the job. 

They got the results back, he was going to die very soon.

So; better to wait until morning for a doctor to start their shift and physically attend to the patient to deliver the exact same information? 

I’d prefer to know. If the family feels it wasn’t the best way, their feedback has been heard. It’s good technology. Everything has negatives.

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21 minutes ago, Piney said:

As long as the checks keep coming from the drug companies and insurance companies he doesn't give a ****.

The primary reasons socialized medicine doesn't work. People are greedy dicks.  

We don’t have enough information to know if this was the case in this case. It might be the most hated part of this doctors job.

I don’t see this as being an ‘easy out’, akin to text message break ups etc. And if anyone is taking advantage of the technology in that way, to just not have to tell people bad news face to face, then that’s wrong and should be dealt with.

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2 minutes ago, Timothy said:

I don’t see this as being an ‘easy out’, akin to text message break ups etc. And if anyone is taking advantage of the technology in that way, to just not have to tell people bad news face to face, then that’s wrong and should be dealt with.

How can he actually be a doctor if he's afraid to give bad news? Doctors have to take risks. Especially ER doctors. They got to have some guts. There are situations where you are either going to kill or cure. There are situations where you are going to cripple a patient to save his life. Then there is the caring factor. If they don't care they are going to be sloppy and make stupid mistakes. 

  It's hard to do a amputation, and before trach tube was reversible, that was hard too.  That stuff sits on your mind.

  This clown seemed like a uncaring, gutless dick. 

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@Piney, I don’t think there’s enough information in this article to be able to make a conclusion on whether the doctor cared or not. 

I’ll read it again and have a bit more of a dig. I could have misread it.

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6 minutes ago, Timothy said:

I’ll read it again and have a bit more of a dig. I could have misread it.

I used up my free access reading about all the damage antivaxers have done. So paste some relevant info if you could. 

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15 minutes ago, Piney said:

I used up my free access reading about all the damage antivaxers have done. So paste some relevant info if you could. 

Antivaxers should be banished to an isolated island. They’d think they’re superior until they all die in a few weeks.

Better them than innocent collateral.

Yeah regarding OP, and reading four articles on this case, there’s no reason to criticize the doctor. Just standard policy. The hospital apologized for falling short of their expectations, which is fair enough.

If the doctor can’t physically attend, what if he died before they could tell him? He did die the next day apparently. Sad situation but I don’t think the doctor should be dragged through the mud. 

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5 minutes ago, Timothy said:

Antivaxers should be banished to an isolated island. They’d think they’re superior until they all die in a few weeks.

That was going to be my next status update. Every antivaxer should be criminally charged for child endangerment. As for the one's whose children were sickened. They should be tied to a pillory and whipped. Then charged with attempted murder.

 

 

9 minutes ago, Timothy said:

Yeah regarding OP, and reading four articles on this case, there’s no reason to criticize the doctor. Just standard policy. The hospital apologized for falling short of their expectations, which is fair enough.

 

There are nurses. A human factor is needed with that kind of news. 

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He actually died 2 days later. My problem with this is that the man was in the hospital. Surely there was a doctor on staff that could have broke this news to the patient and his family. That is hard news to hear and I'm sure the family had questions even though they knew the man was dying. Medicine is becoming very impersonal and that, to me, is not a good thing. You don't even get to speak to your surgeon anymore until you go in for the surgery. 

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7 minutes ago, susieice said:

He actually died 2 days later. My problem with this is that the man was in the hospital. Surely there was a doctor on staff that could have broke this news to the patient and his family. That is hard news to hear and I'm sure the family had questions even though they knew the man was dying. Medicine is becoming very impersonal and that, to me, is not a good thing. You don't even get to speak to your surgeon anymore until you go in for the surgery. 

Physicians are being squeezed just like everyone else in the industry.  They're all becoming employees and even the ones that try to run their own establishment have so many government mandates that they have to meet that they must do assembly line medicine to earn a living.  And it goes downhill from here.

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Quote

"The evening video tele-visit was a follow-up to earlier physician visits," she added. "It did not replace previous conversations with patient and family members and was not used in the delivery of the initial diagnosis."

Initially this sounds rather uncaring...but....quite honestly as long as there is a family member by their side, why would you care if the doctor was also there in person? 

This man was not alone and from what i have read, the news was not unexpected, it seems from the above, the confirmation of what was expected, he died a couple of days later.

I believe we are missing something from this story, i do not believe the family were not aware of the technology used in the hospital.

The only thing i think was not right, is the hospital should have waited until the wife arrived.

Quote

Mr Quintana's granddaughter, Annalisa Wilharm, who was with him at the hospital, 

She was the only family member there,  the report does not say if she was aware of the hospitals procedures or whether she was aware of the previous conversations or initial diagnosis, if she was not, then it must have come as a bit of a shock to her.

BUT why was it not a family member who posted it on social media, it was a friend of the daughter, neither of them were there at the time, so we really do not know how it happened. 

Did the robot really just turn up at the door and spill the final news without consulting the family member who was there first?  

Were the family there when the initial diagnosis and conversations were had?  Had the wife agreed and was she aware of the robot procedure? 

We do not know what the family had agreed to,  but we do know they were not the ones who posted it on social media.

 

Edited by freetoroam
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One other thing:

Quote

Told Mr Quintana] he has no lungs left only option is comfort care, remove the mask helping him breathe and put him on a morphine drip until he dies".

 

So the friend of the daughter who posted this thinks the doctor told the grand-daughter who was there that this is what they would do without any previous conversation??? The doctor could see who was with him. 

I can not believe this was said at the time when it was only the grand-daughter there unless she had asked the doctor some questions and the doctor would not tell anybody this unless he knew who she was.

 

 

Edited by freetoroam
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"If you're coming to tell us normal news, that's fine, but if you're coming to tell us there's no lung left and we want to put you on a morphine drip until you die, it should be done by a human being and not a machine," his daughter Catherine Quintana said Friday.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kaiser-permanente-medical-center-california-man-learns-he-is-dying-from-doctor-on-robot-video-2019-03-09/

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The family was just on ABC World News Tonight. They are upset.

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Sad as this all is, being dis-compassionate really isn't a crime.  I got a lot of flak back in my college days when I told my roommate that he needed to call home because his grandpa bit it.  Candied words and consoling others was never my strong point.  Being blunt is a lot better than being paralyzed by the fear of saying the wrong thing, being deceitful about it, or trying to pawn the chore off on others.

I'm rather curious as to where this doctor was that he needed a robot to tell the patient/family.  Telling them in person when someone only has a few days to live is pretty pointless if you are more than a few days away.  If he was in his office or just at home, then he definitely used the robot as a means to alleviate his own personal discomfort at telling them the news.  It's pretty much the same as someone who fires people with tweets or breaks up over a phone.

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5 minutes ago, Gromdor said:

Sad as this all is, being dis-compassionate really isn't a crime.  I got a lot of flak back in my college days when I told my roommate that he needed to call home because his grandpa bit it.  Candied words and consoling others was never my strong point.  Being blunt is a lot better than being paralyzed by the fear of saying the wrong thing, being deceitful about it, or trying to pawn the chore off on others.

I'm rather curious as to where this doctor was that he needed a robot to tell the patient/family.  Telling them in person when someone only has a few days to live is pretty pointless if you are more than a few days away.  If he was in his office or just at home, then he definitely used the robot as a means to alleviate his own personal discomfort at telling them the news.  It's pretty much the same as someone who fires people with tweets or breaks up over a phone.

Empathy isn't something that all of us are good at. Like others have pointed out, this is only one side of the story, anyway. Without knowing the full set of circumstances, there's no reason to make any assumptions.

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2 minutes ago, Imaginarynumber1 said:

Empathy isn't something that all of us are good at. Like others have pointed out, this is only one side of the story, anyway. Without knowing the full set of circumstances, there's no reason to make any assumptions.

Oh, I have a bit of empathy.  It's the thing that tells me that the news I have to deliver is going to hurt.  Courage is another trait that is needed though.  That's the trait that you use to go up to them, look them in the eye, and tell them the truth they need to hear.  I wasn't the only roommate that knew the news, I was just the one the others wanted to deliver the news because they were just too uncomfortable doing it. 

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3 minutes ago, Gromdor said:

Oh, I have a bit of empathy.  It's the thing that tells me that the news I have to deliver is going to hurt.  Courage is another trait that is needed though.  That's the trait that you use to go up to them, look them in the eye, and tell them the truth they need to hear.  I wasn't the only roommate that knew the news, I was just the one the others wanted to deliver the news because they were just too uncomfortable doing it. 

I should have been clearer. I meant me. I'm, not empathetic at all.

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3 hours ago, Piney said:

As long as the checks keep coming from the drug companies and insurance companies he doesn't give a ****.

The primary reasons socialized medicine doesn't work. People are greedy dicks.  

Except for all the countries where it does. 

Maybe it's just Americans that are the problem. 

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50 minutes ago, Eldorado said:

"If you're coming to tell us normal news, that's fine, but if you're coming to tell us there's no lung left and we want to put you on a morphine drip until you die, it should be done by a human being and not a machine," his daughter Catherine Quintana said Friday.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kaiser-permanente-medical-center-california-man-learns-he-is-dying-from-doctor-on-robot-video-2019-03-09/

I still thing we are missing something. The daughter was not there to hear what was said.

I can not believe the doctor would have told the grand-daughter just like that.

 

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2 minutes ago, Setton said:

Maybe it's just Americans that are the problem. 

Purdue Pharma, Insurance companies backed and owned by politicians and welfare profiteers who are politicians.......:huh:

.....Yeah, It is a American thing. But they do have a tendency to turn everything they touch to ****. I know that no Scandinavian politician would get away with any of their crap. They'd be in prison. 

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