Among doctors, fierce reluctance to let go

Even when the system works as it’s supposed to, and palliative care specialists arrive like the cavalry to provide comfort care, to stop fruitless and painful interventions and to support what patients want, their own colleagues may brand them murderers. After surveying nearly 700 physician-members of a national hospice and palliative medicine organization, the authors of a recently published report in The Journal of Palliative Medicine said that more than half had had at least one experience in the past five years of another physician or healthcare professional referring to their treatments as "euthanasia," "killing" or "murder."