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What Is The Dismissive Way In 'When Doctors Need To Lie'

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Doctor’s were taught how to tend to their patients, not their surrogates which is why surrogates are usually dismissed or neglected. In the narrative “A Small Good Thing” by Raymond Carver, this idea is further supported when we look at the real world research in done in What Doctor Know About How Bad It Is and Won’t Say It” by Paula Span and “When Doctors Need to Lie” by Sandeep Jauhar. When looking at the stories “A Small Good Thing”,“What Doctor Know About How Bad It Is and Won’t Say It” and “When Doctors Need to Lie” by Sandeep Jauhar, we realized that the dismissive way in which the Weisses are treated by the hospital staff is caused by the doctors not wanting to be the bearer of substandard new and wanting the families to cling to hope. …show more content…

In the anecdote “When Doctor’s Need to Lie”, Jaguar states “I once had the unenviable task of informing a 22-year old Jamaican man that he was suffering that he was suffering from severe heart failure and would probably need a heart transplant.” The doctors do not want to be the one to tell the patient he is going to die soon, yet his profession obligates him to. He goes on a whole crisis as he faced this dilemma due to the fact that he does not want to tell the patient but the patient needs to know the condition of his own body. On the contrary to ““A Small Good Thing”, the surrogate knew of his son’s condition. The father begs the doctor to lie and misinform the patient about his condition so that he won’t be devastated. In this situation, the choice the doctor makes is vital. Whether or not he tells the patient his condition will not change the patient's condition, it will remain the same. In “A Small Good Thing” the Weiss was on the opposite side of this dilemma, their child was in an accident and they were told everything was fine when it was not. The Weisses were told numerous time that the child was “okay” or that he is likely to survive when in reality he was fighting for his life. In this situation, the Weiss were lied to so that they would not be …show more content…

If the doctors were to tell the surrogates that truth in severe situations the family can better prepare for the consequences, but they will lose faith in the doctors’ work. The doctors are very hesitant and dubious to address the patients’ families. In the text “A Small Good Thing” by Raymond Carver there could have been alternative ending that was better for the Weisses. If they had known beforehand while their son was being operated on, they would have been able to handle the situation better. They would have been semi emotionally prepared for a life without their son. At the end of the novel they were told all the information that has been withheld since they entered the hospital. The information was just piled on and before they had time to process they had to leave. If the Weisses were given accurate and detailed information from the start the situation would have been better to handle. Therefore, the doctors would not have had to carry the burden of information all by themselves or had to take on the guilt of the son’s death. In the novel, it says the death of the son could have been prevented if the doctors had been more informed about the son’s condition. If the doctors and the Weisses had an honest

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