About Dying

What Doctors Know — and We Can Learn — About Dying

Physicians are more likely to sign advance directives and avoid rescue measures at the end of their lives

By SHANNON BROWNLEE | @ShannonBrownlee | January 16, 2012 | 

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Brownlee's latest book isOvertreated: Why Too Much Medicine is Making Us Sicker and Poorer.

Last month, an essay posted by retired physician Ken Murray called “How Doctors Die” got a huge amount of attention, some negative but mostly positive. Murray tells the story of an orthopedic surgeon who, after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, chose not to undergo treatment. The surgeon died some months later at home, never having set foot inside a hospital again.

Critics said that the essay was a biased opinion of how one should die, not an actual analysis of how doctors actually do die. And indeed, much of Murray’s essay was anecdotal. Murray writes that his physician friends wear medallions with DNR, or Do Not Resuscitate, orders. They instruct their colleagues to not take any heroic measures and to keep them out of the ICU at the end of life. He’s even seen a colleague with a DNR tattoo, something I’ve been threatening to get for a long time.