Module 1: Professional Accountability and Prescribing

Lesson 6

Quality of life

The objective of all clinical encounters is to improve and address quality of life as experienced by the patient. In this case, the perspective of the provider seemed to have overridden the perspective of the patient. Without treatment for alcohol dependency or pain, SM would have been unable to return to normal life. Provider bias is apparent as treatment was not offered because of SM’s dependency issues. During an acute event, patients with a dependency are often open to treatment; however, treatment was never offered in this case. No investigation of the pain was completed until someone advocated on his behalf, though SM died shortly afterwards from the recently discovered cancer.