For years, advance medical directives, popularly known as living wills, have been promoted as giving people control over what happens to them at “end of life”, i.e., when they are in dire medical straits. (1) It is hard to disagree with the concept. Certainly, people have the right to refuse treatment they don’t find helpful … Continue reading Lisa Blumberg: Getting Beyond Advance Medical Directives
A friend asked if I knew how many people have been medically killed since Covid-19. My answer is that there is no way to know. We know about Michael Hickson and we’re just learning about Sarah McSweeney and perhaps many others from a recent NPR investigation. However, when relatives agree, or at least don’t vociferously … Continue reading Carol Cleigh Sutton – DNR: Choice or Medical Murder?
The New York Department of Health recently requested public input from health care providers and patients on how to make advance care planning forms more understandable and easy to use. The Department provided a response template with questions focused on people’s experiences with three forms: the health care proxy, out-of-hospital do not resuscitate order (DNR) … Continue reading NDY Submits Public Comment to NY Dept. of Health on Advance Care Planning
Kaiser Health News recently carried an article encouraging people to create videos to help explain what’s in their advance directives, which are often overly complex legal boilerplate or overly simplistic checkbox forms. One thing I like about the article, Straight From The Patient’s Mouth: Videos Can Clearly State Your End-Of-Life Wishes, is the discussion of … Continue reading Supplementing Your Advance Directive With A Video
Below is an article published on Friday, 11/3/17 by Kaiser Health News. The original article can be found at https://khn.org/news/new-instructions-could-let-dementia-patients-refuse-spoon-feeding/ and is republished here, according to the guidelines of Kaiser Health News. A “right to die” organization based in Washington state is pushing a new advanced directive that would allow people with dementia to refuse to be … Continue reading WA, USA: Assisted Suicide Advocates Push Documents for People with Dementia to “Refuse” Spoon-Feeding
