Media Release
Udupi, Nov 27: A half day expert consultation workshop was conducted at KMC Manipal recently. The purpose of this workshop was to sensitise the doctors, health care providers on various medically futile clinical conditions needing limitation of life sustaining treatment and end of life care. It was also to clarify myths and misconceptions and provide legal and ethical clarity on limitation of life sustaining treatment.
The program was inaugurated by Dr Poornima Baliga, pro-vice chancellor of Manipal Academy of Higher Education. She highlighted the challenges hospitals are facing as patients with terminal illness and medically futile conditions are getting needless aggressive medical interventions without any benefit. Moreover, it is translating into excessive suffering and high costs for patients and their families. This is due to lack of clarity and policies surrounding limitation of life sustain treatment.
The workshop had four nationally renowned experts as resource persons. Dr R K Mani, a senior critical care physician and chief-editor of Indian Journal of Critical Care Medicine spoke about limiting life sustaining treatment in critical and terminal illness in an ICU setting. Dr Roop Gursahani a neurologist from Hinduja hospital Mumbai spoke about limiting life sustain treatment in patients with catastrophic brain injury and irreversible brain damage. Dhvani Mehta, a legal academician from Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, spoke about current constitutional and legal provisions for limiting life sustaining treatment in India. Dr Nagesh Simha, Medical Director of Karunashraya, spoke about how effective communication is helpful during situations where limitation of life sustaining treatments has to be initiated.
The talks were followed by a 90-minute panel discussion that gave opportunity to physicians from various disciplines to ask questions to the experts and clarify their doubts about the ethical and legal aspects and process involved in limitation of life sustaining treatment. The program was attended by all the hospital physicians, medical superintendents of all the Manipal hospitals, hospital administrators and the legal fraternity. The outcome of this workshop is to create a Standard Operating Procedures for limitation of life sustaining treatment and end of life care that will be applicable for practice across all Manipal group of hospitals in India.