Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: The Coping with Cancer Study was a multisite study based in the Dana Farber Institute's Center for Psycho-oncology and Palliative Care Research and designed to examine the relationships between psychosocial factors and end-of-life care [1,2].Andrea C. Phelps and colleagues used a subset of the data from this study to explore whether a statistical correlation could be found between patients' religious coping styles and the administration of intensive medical treatment during the last week of their lives.In short, Phelps et al. concluded that those patients who reported using positive religious coping methods on a survey instrument were significantly more likely than others to have undergone invasive life support at the end of their lives and to have died in intensive care units.Readers or clinicians who wish to apply this finding to medical practice face the tasks of understanding the meaning of the prospective patients' coping styles and the significance of the outcomes being measured and then inferring why these two artifacts should be connected.In this discussion of Phelps' study, I seek this type of understanding with the goal of identifying the value that this article might have for those in graduate and postgraduate medical education.
Source: The AMA Journal of Ethic
Author: Kyle B. Brothers
Institution: Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4254067067