Every single patient and family come to health care from different situations. There is a vast array of intellectual capabilities, cultural, and educational backgrounds among all patients, and health care professionals have to do their best to explain things to people of all backgrounds.
Lots and lots of documentation is required now about how much time was spent in consultation answering patient's questions, and what information they were given as they make decisions. Second and third opinions are always encouraged when the patient or family asks. Hospitals in my area are required to ask EVERY patient who is admitted for outpatient or inpatient surgery to fill out forms about end of life decisions ahead of time, as a basis for continuing conversation if the need arises.
There is a wide variation in people's personalities, backgrounds, and intellectual capabilities. The overwhelming majority of modern professionals try to meet patients at their level, and explain everything in terms they can understand. And sometimes patients and their families only hear what they want to hear. Or they are in denial about risks. We have made surgery and anesthesia so safe, with modern drugs and modern procedures, that a large swath of the population truly believes that nothing should ever go wrong, and if there are complications, someone must have been incompetent or made a mistake to cause that. Few people believe that everything can be done "right", and still complications occur.
We have no control over what people truly understand, what they accept, and how they react to what what is going on.
For example, somewhere during Jahi's care a nurse explained in very basic terms the flow volume loop color on the ventilator, probably answering the mother's question about what it was. Someone explained in very basic terms what the settings and rate are. So then the mother assumes she understands "enough" to interpret and criticize changes in ventilator settings, and thinks her daughter's body is attempting to take breaths.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I see it on these discussion groups all the time-- people with a little knowledge think they understand a complex medical situation, and end up misleading a lot of readers. People see an advertisement for a drug in a magazine, and "insist" that their doctor prescribe it for them. The neighbor has an MRI for her headaches, so a patient schedules an appointment and asks for an MRI. People ask for surgeries that are not indicated every day of the week. People are offered surgeries that may or may not solve the problem they are trying to fix. A lot of people research the maintenance procedures on their cars more thoroughly than they research the elective surgeries they have.
Most people, in my experience, absolutely do not want to hear about how their risk factors might affect their care and their health. They are embarrassed, and defensive, and sometimes angry when health care professionals try to discuss the impact of these risk factors. People do not want to acknowledge that they are tremendously overweight, and that affects every aspect of their care. They don't want to understand that smoking affects every body system, shortens their life, and increases their risks. People don't want to face the facts that their sedentary lifestyle, bad diet, and daily alcohol intake has negative consequences that the best health care cannot overcome. A lot of people are in complete denial about how their own choices affect their health and health care, and want to make it all about the doctors and health care professionals not doing a good enough job at the point in which they present for care.
Doctors and other health care providers are not gods. They are people trying to do a very difficult job, with a variety of factors in their patients that they can't control.
