Econintersect: The summary from Medscape, written by Leslie Kane, MA:
Physicians grapple with many wrenching decisions throughout their medical careers. Some situations involve whether to prolong or bring an end to patients’ lives; others spark heated debates among physicians with different values. More than 21,000 physicians told Medscape how they feel about medicine’s most critical issues. Respondents included more than 17,000 US and 4000 European physicians. This slideshow reports the US physicians’ results. Representative respondent comments are also shown, to shed more light on the issues at hand.
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Some of the results include: Less than 20% of all physicians outside of emergency care would always give life-sustaining therapy if they considered it futile, but more than 25% would do so in emergency treatment. Also, more than 1/2 of physicians personally opposed to abortion would performing one (44% “yes“, 15% “it depends“) and less than 1/2 of all doctors think late-term abortions should be illegal.
