Advance Directive
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Being clear about your last wishes can make death easier for you and loved ones
Barbara Bush’s recent death and the way she prepared for it remind us that death can be peaceful and marked by family togetherness rather than conflict.
Mrs. Bush chose palliative, or comfort, care over aggressive medical treatment given her age and overall health status. Her family agreed to support her decisions.
It does not always work this way, but it could.
I recently published a book with Dr. David P. Schenck entitled “Communication and Bioethics at the End of Life: Real Cases, Real Dilemmas.” We include several cases in which such family discussions did not occur. This lack of information led to an unfortunate cascade of events that made the patient’s deaths…
Resources
Dr. Seuss Does Advance Directives: A Tim Boon Poem
Tim Boon, RN is the CEO of Good Shepherd Community Care in Newton, MA. Share this poem with ALL the loved ones.
One Day Your Mind May Fade. At Least You’ll Have a Plan.
Like a growing number of Americans over age 60, she already had a standard advance directive, designating a decision-maker (her husband) to direct her medical care if she became incapacitated. Not all experts are convinced another directive is needed. But as Dr. Gaster and his co-authors recently argued in the journal JAMA, the usual forms don’t provide much help with dementia.
What’s Your Death Plan?
We all know that communicating our end-of-life care preferences is essential to receive the care we desire, but only one-third of us have done so. I was one of the majority of people without a plan, and I learned the hard way that dying in America is difficult. I failed at ensuring the best gift we can provide to a dying loved one: the care they desire at their most vulnerable time.
Doctors still provide too many dying patients with needless treatment
Many doctors are continuing to provide end-of-life patients with needless treatments that only worsen the quality of their last days, new research shows.
Emergency care and resuscitation plans
When a person’s heart or breathing stops and the cause is reversible, immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) offers a chance of life. However, when a person is dying—for example, from organ failure, frailty, or advanced cancer—and his or her heart stops as a final part of a dying process, CPR will not prevent death and may do harm. “Do not attempt CPR” (DNACPR) decisions were first documented in the 1970s, to try to protect people from receiving CPR that they did not want, that would not work, or would not give them overall benefit.
Even If You're Completely Healthy, You Need At Least One Of These Four Medical Documents
It’s vital for you to be of sound mind and body when getting any of these documents in place, or else they may be useless. So if you like to be in control, take care of what you need to now so other people aren’t the ones making decisions on your behalf later.
How to Make Your Wishes for End-of-Life Care Clear
New concerns arise about how well patients and doctors understand advance directives.
On the Art of Dying Well
An intensive care unit death can cost $450,000. A difficult open-heart surgery, same deal. If we have the money for that, why don’t we have the money for slow medicine that truly supports people through the toughest times in their lives?
The Documents You Need, When You Need Them
Those digitally transmitted documents have the same legal authority as a signed and witnessed form on paper, said Mr. Silkenat, who now uses the app himself. “We’ve tested this with health care providers, family members, health insurers,” he said. “So far it’s worked well.” My Health Care Wishes comes in two versions...
The Trouble With Advance Directives
Too often, though, an advance directive hardly seems to matter. Stories abound of documents misplaced, stashed in safe deposit boxes, filed in lawyers’ offices. Dr. Aslakson remembers a frantic search to unearth a directive that was eventually found tucked into a Bible. Frequently, “the directive never gets to the right place, or isn’t referred to when a decision needs to be made,” said David M. English, chairman of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging.
Being clear about your last wishes can make death easier for you and loved ones
Barbara Bush’s recent death and the way she prepared for it remind us that death can be peaceful and marked by family togetherness rather than conflict. Mrs. Bush chose palliative, or comfort, care over aggressive medical treatment given her age and overall health status. Her family agreed to support her decisions. It does not always work this way, but it could.
My Health Care Wishes App
The Personal Advance Directive Manager is a ONE person, ONE document version designed to revolutionize information sharing during a medical crisis so that your advance care document can be instantly conveyed and delivered. Now you can securely store and retrieve this document in PDF, and export it to a hospital or physician in minutes.
MyDirectives
Emergencies can happen at any time, leaving you too injured or ill to communicate decisions about your medical treatment. MyDirectives helps you create your own emergency, critical and advance care plan for your family and doctors so they can make decisions on your behalf.
Prepare for Your Care
PREPARE helps people begin the important process of planning for their medical care. The site is HIPAA compliant and available in English and Spanish.
The Conversation Project
The Conversation Project is dedicated to helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care.
Coalition for Compassionate Care of California
Our vision is to create a community where people explore their wishes for care towards the end of life, express these wishes, and have their wishes honored. Our goal is to transform healthcare so that medical care is aligned with individual patient’s preferences—that people get the care they need and no less, and the care they want and no more.
MedlinePlus
What kind of medical care would you want if you were too ill or hurt to express your wishes? Advance directives are legal documents that allow you to spell out your decisions about end-of-life care ahead of time. They give you a way to tell your wishes to family, friends, and health care professionals and to avoid confusion later on.
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