Online Distance Learning Program Students With Their Physical Therapy Degrees Are Welcomed Into The Far Ranging Medical Arena As They Bring New Skills To Patient Care
Part of the Hippocratic Oath, which every doctor must take, states they are “To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them.” According to the prominent health care publication, the New England Journal of Medicine, there now is a new form of challenging the very core of this principle. In turn it’s creating a new sort of medicine that is starting to be practiced in hospitals throughout the US; Palliative Care.
In plain English, Palliative medicine is a medical specialty that focuses on the end-of-life care of patients. Its controversy can best be summed up in this example. If a doctor knows that his or her patient is dying from a totally incurable disease such as cancer, does the doctor continue with such procedures as chemotherapy, knowing full well it will only painfully postpone the inevitable or just do one’s best to make the patient as comfortable as possible until then? In the case of Palliative medicine, the answer is the latter.
Apparently quite a few hospitals and other medical facilities are opening up palliative wings, and need trained medical personnel to staff them. Their problem is it’s a very new field; a certification process was only instituted in 2008 by the American Board of Medical Specialists. Also at the moment, only 46 universities are offering courses in palliative care, including fellowships. The NEJM reports many more will come soon.
More interesting fact from the Journal include over 4,600 hospices in the U.S. now have added palliative care while 75% of all hospitals with over 100 beds shall have palliative wings over the decade. That will translate into a growing need for palliative care specialists, in practice and administrative positions, field leaders predict.
One thing any medical professional should consider in taking this career path is there currently aren’t that many institutions that offer training. One way many doctors are getting around this is through interdisciplinary mixing and matching to suit what a doctor feels will suit his or her charges’ personal needs and comforts.
For those interested in pursuing this new form of medicine, probably the best thing to do is some serious self-examination and research before committing to a program. Obviously, one should consider a particular specialty as a core, and then see how one can attach other fields into the core. Many doctors are doing this by taking online courses and “preceptorships,” hands-on learning with an experienced palliative practitioner.
Those considering becoming palliative practitioners should also keep in mind there is some controversy about this specialty. There are those, both inside and outside medicine, who consider palliative medicine a nice way to say mercy killing or euthanasia, particularly those with strong religious opinions. This is something that will only be resolved with time.
What’s not an issue though is people are living longer and longer lives. While many are enjoying their golden years, there are those others who aren’t. Graduates of distance learning college programs will find the education that results in their law master degree encompasses every aspect of a field that is simply a necessary part of life.