Reckoning with medicine's rescue fantasy

Why is something inevitable so tricky in the profession that deals with it the most? Death is a natural, inevitable, and deeply human process, yet Western medicine tends to view it as a medical failure. Shawn Abreu and Nicole Piemonte examine how contemporary medicalization of death and dying calls Doctors to acknowledge death's existential and emotional realities. Yet, Medical school doesn't adequately prepare them for their greatest challenge: facing the void with their patients. "At this point in my training, I had no idea why someone would choose to stop something that was extending their life. I'd only been taught how to prolong life, or at least improve mortality and stave off death for a while longer. Listening to leaders and studying how to do that, how to intervene and attempt to fix pathological biological breakdowns, was more than enough to keep me occupied all hours of the day and many hours of the night."