Radiolab Podcast Reveals Doctors’ Preferences With Regard to Their Own End-of-Life Options

We turn to doctors to save our lives – to heal us, repair us, and
keep us healthy. But when it comes to the critical question of what to do when
death is at hand, there seems to be a gap between what we want doctors to do
for us, and what doctors want done for themselves. In this Radiolab podcast,
Producer Sean Cole introduces us to Joseph Gallo, a doctor and professor at
Johns Hopkins University who discovered something striking about what doctors
were not willing to do to save their own lives. As part of the decades-long
Johns Hopkins Precursors Study, Gallo found himself asking the study's aging
doctor-subjects questions about death. Their answers, it turns out, don't sync
up with the answers most of us give. Ken Murray, a doctor who's written several
articles about how doctors think about death, explains that there's a huge gap
between what patients expect from life-saving interventions (such as CPR,
ventilation, and feeding tubes), and what doctors think of these very same
procedures.

Learn more and access the podcast.