Autopsy

On medicine, we recently withdrew care from one of our patients (a different one than the patient mentioned several posts ago). She spent a prolonged period in the ICU and we could not achieve her desired quality of life. Finally, through discussions with the daughter, we withdrew care in concordance with the patient's advance directive and pre-stated wishes.

The daughter allowed us to do an autopsy. Autopsies are fundamentally important to the advancement of medicine. Although they obviously cannot help us care for the patient, they influence our care for future patients. Doctors no longer do their own autopsies, and the rates of doing them have gone down. But I think the educational value of an autopsy is often underestimated. It's the gold standard for pathology. It is how we learn our mistakes, our limits, and our successes. It helps physicians achieve closure in a difficult and trying case.

We went down to see the autopsy results. The pathologist went through all the different organs, pointing out things we wouldn't have known otherwise. It reminded me a lot of the first two years of medical school, the stinging formaldehyde, the palpation of organs, the didactic nature of medicine. And I think that the autopsy really generated a deep regard and respect for the human body and its wonders.