Thursday, June 23, 2011 HBO Program Dissects Oregon's Experience with the Death with Dignity Law
In 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. As a result, any individual whom two physicians diagnose as having less than six months to live can lawfully request a fatal dose of barbiturate to end his or her life. Since 1994, more than 500 Oregonians have taken their mortality into their own hands. In How to Die in Oregon, filmmaker Peter Richardson gently enters the lives of the terminally ill as they consider whether - and when - to end their lives by lethal overdose. Richardson examines both sides of this complex, emotionally charged issue. What emerges is a life-affirming, staggeringly powerful portrait of what it means to die with dignity
See more at http://www.hbo.com/#/documentaries/how-to-die-in-oregon Wednesday, June 08, 2011 Consumer’s Tool Kit for Health Care Advance Planning
This is a resource I have been sharing with my clients for years. As I tell them when we discuss the use of Advance Medical Directives, the only thing worse than not having an Advance Medical Directive and appointing an Agent under your Health Care Power of Attorney, is to appoint a Health Care Agent and never talk to them about how you would make medical decisions if you had the capacity to! This Toolkit helps you to plan by getting you to think about specific health care situations you may find yourself in.
End of life decisions are too important to put off. Address them now, with your loved ones while you still have capacity to think about the situations and decide the path you want to take. Don't leave the decision making to a spouse or children; it's your life and your values, make you decisions now so that if the time comes, your Agent will be carrying out your wishes!
http://www.americanbar.org/groups/law_aging/resources/consumer_s_toolkit_for_health_care_advance_planning.html Thursday, July 15, 2010 Study calls for improvements in doctors' handling of end-of-life care
At UCLA Medical Center, which prides itself on caring for critically ill patients, a recent study showed room for improvement in the way doctors manage dying patients -- and the findings likely apply to other hospitals as well, the researchers say. While doctors excelled at pain control, they did less well at talking to patients and families about prognosis and goals of care. They were good about ordering comfort care, but not about follow-up to make sure the care was effective. Lead author Dr. Anne Walling, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues analyzed the charts of 496 adults who were hospitalized at least three days before dying. The researchers assessed the patients' end-of-life care based on 13 quality indicators in three domains: eliciting goals of care, pain assessment and management, and assessment and management of dyspnea (difficulty breathing). More than half of the patients were admitted to the hospital with end-stage disease, one-third required removal from mechanical ventilation before death and 15 percent died while receiving CPR. Records showed that 85 percent of the patients were likely to die during the hospitalization, and 47 percent had "expected death" documented in their charts. One-third had mechanical ventilation discontinued before death, and 15 percent died during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Eighty-four percent had do-not-resuscitate orders, which were written on the day of death in 28 percent of cases and two days before in half of cases. Only 18 percent had advance directives prepared. For 70 percent of the quality indicators studied, patients received recommended care.
Source: Reuters Health (July 7, 2010)
Full story: http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2010/07/08/eline/links
/20100708elin022.html
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