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.