Posts Tagged ‘living will’

Sep 10, 2012Advance Care Planning Is a Subject Many People Prefer to Ignore

By Alex Branch
Star-Telegram
September 9, 2012

Chaplain David Lowe has seen his share of grief-stricken family members at the bedsides of hospitalized loved ones in the final stage of life.

He has watched sons, daughters and spouses buckle under the pressure of difficult decisions, such as whether to keep that loved one on life support after doctors say they see no hope of recovery.

Those circumstances add extra stress and anxiety that, in Lowe’s view, often could be lessened if the patient and family had previously discussed what kind of care he or she wanted in those final days.

It’s why Lowe is promoting public workshops in Tarrant County this fall intended to help families prepare for end-of-life care options.

“When someone finds themselves suddenly in that role of decision maker during a major illness or hospitalization, it is laden with emotion and a very hard place to be,” said Lowe, director of pastoral care for the western region of the Baylor Health Care System. “I tell folks it doesn’t have to be that way. We want to move people out of the role of decision maker and more into a role of a spokesman, or an advocate, for their loved ones’ wishes.”

The Coalition for Quality End of Life Care, an Arlington-based organization, will present the workshops, which cover advance care planning, powers of attorney, wills, guardianship, funeral planning and financial benefits.

The workshops, which start Saturday, are free, though attendees are encouraged to register in advance, said Diane Wolfe, who is handling publicity for the events.

The subject matter is something that many people prefer to avoid, said Dr. Kendra Belfi, a recently retired Fort Worth internal medicine and geriatrics physician.

A 2008 report to Congress by the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that between 18 and 36 percent of the adult population had completed advance care directives.

“Advances in medical care and technology during the latter half of the 20th century have prolonged life expectancy in the United States,” the report concluded. “However, these same advances have blurred the boundary between life and death, challenging our expectations about how Americans could experience the end of life.” More

Aug 17, 2012The Next Steps: How to Start Your End-of-Life ‘Conversation’

By Dr. Shari Barnett
ABC News
August 16, 2012

You have started to think about what you would want for the end of your life, but where should you start?

Fortunately, there are several resources to which you can refer to help you start your own conversation, including those that will help you decide what questions you should ask yourself and what choices you or your family will be faced with at the end of life.

Initiate the Conversation

The Caring Conversations Workbook, published by the Center for Practical Bioethics, is a great place to start. This workbook will help you ask yourself questions that will be important for your decision-making process. It will help you explore your feelings about certain scenarios and provide you a place to start collecting your thoughts.

Another resource, produced by the American Bar Association, is its Tool kit for health care advanced planning. This collection of 10 simple tools to help you and your family have an end-of-life conversation can also help you explore, refine and voice what is important to you at the end of life.

Get Your Documents in Order

These resources can help get you started in preparing the documents you need to secure your end-of-life plans.

There are three major terms you should know when you are trying to communicate your wishes to your loved ones and your health care team.

Advanced directive: It refers to any document that gives instructions about your health care. Your advanced directive is often made up of a living will and durable power of attorney for health care.

Living Will: Your living will is the section of your advance directive that states your wishes regarding the medical treatments you would want if you were terminally ill, permanently unconscious or in the end-stage of a fatal illness.

Durable Power of Attorney of Health Care (or Health Care Proxy): Your durable power of attorney for health care is person (or proxy) who will make medical decisions for you if you can no longer make them for yourself. You should give the proxy instructions for how to make these medical decisions in your living will and also discuss these topics with all of your loved ones, but especially your proxy. Your proxy is supposed to communicate to the health care team what you would want in the event you can no longer do so.

Choices like these can be demanding on not just person who is setting up the living will but also on the family member or friend who will be called on to act as a health care proxy or agent.

Act as a Health Care Proxy or Agent

There are resources for the health care proxy or agent, as well. The American Bar Association has produced guide on how to serve as an effective advocate for a loved one.

Start the Process Online

There are many resources to help you establish an advance directive online. Mydirectives.com (mydirectives.com) can also help you establish a Web-based universal advance digital directive for free. The directive can be digitally signed, is encrypted and stored so it is available to you any time you might need it.

The American Bar Association has an online form to establish a universal durable power of attorney for health care that can be used in 45 states. The ABA has also compiled a list of resources by state.

The Caring Conversations Workbook can help you establish a durable power of attorney as well as an advanced directive.

Apr 16, 2012Easy New Format for Advance Directive

Arrives for National Healthcare Decisions Day on April 16th

Compassion & Choices, the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit organization working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life, today announced a new resource to aid all Americans in advance care planning. In time for the fifth annual National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD), Compassion & Choices is offering free advance directive forms specific to every state, in an editable PDF format. The new format eases the completion of an advance directive, and Compassion & Choices offers additional tools to facilitate the process.

“We can’t control everything about our death. But if we communicate effectively, we make it more likely that our wishes for the end of life will be known and respected,” said Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion & Choices. “Recent studies indicate the single most powerful thing a person can do to improve the chance for gentle dying is — simply and courageously — to talk about it.”

Compassion & Choices offers a Good-to-Go Toolkit and Good-To-Go Resource Guide to help define priorities, understand who to talk with and find ideas on how to get the conversation rolling. These planning tools and editable state-specific advance directive forms can be downloaded at CompassionAndChoices.org/G2G, free of charge.

Over a thousand organizations joined this year to promote NHDD, an initiative to encourage the majority of Americans who have not yet done so to complete advance directives.

For more information please visit www.compassionandchoices.org

Compassion & Choices is a nonprofit organization working to improve care and expand choice at the end of life. We support, educate and advocate.

Apr 27, 2011Personal Decisions Matter at End Of Life

The Republican
Wednesday, April 27, 2011

When family members take on the responsibility of caring for a loved one nearing the end of life or are called upon to make health-care decisions on behalf of their loved one because he or she is unable to speak, suddenly the enormity of this responsibility looms large.

What would my loved one want? Do we continue with yet another medical treatment?

Do we withhold high-tech life support? Do we want intensive medical interventions that may prolong suffering?

How far do we go? How do we assure quality of life as the end nears?

Of primary concern is the question, “How do we honor those we love, respecting the dignity of their values and preferences for life care?”

As an individual, your decisions matter. This is especially true when it comes time to examine how you plan and prepare your health-care and quality-of-life decisions as they communicate your wishes for end-of-life treatment.

Did you know that nearly 70 percent of Americans say they would rather die at home, surrounded by family members? Yet in Massachusetts this expectation is reversed; 70 percent die in nursing homes or in hospitals, often spending their last days hooked up to high-tech life support machines. Fewer than 25 percent die at home.

Recently, family members caring for their dying mother at home related how grateful they were because their mother had made her wishes known and clearly communicated what she desired and wanted.

“She made it easy for us because all we have to do is follow what she wanted,” they said.

This reality does not remove the gamut of emotions that accompany them as they tend to their mother. But it does remove the struggle of having to decide on their own without the assurance their decision would in fact really be what their mother wanted.

They do not have to worry about the guilt, remorse or uncertainty that comes when loving guidance is not clearly communicated.

Do yourself and your loved ones a favor. Be willing to enter into conversations about what health-care choices you would desire if you were unable to speak for yourself. Convey your wishes through an advance directive. Advance directives enable others to know in advance what your choices are.

A “health-care proxy” documents the person you select to be your voice when you cannot speak for yourself.

A “living will” documents what kind of medical treatments you would or would not want at the end of life.

Quaboag Valley Hospice is available to offer assistance by providing literature and tools to assist with thoughtful reflection on health care choices. They are also available for group presentations and additional information as needed. They may be reached at (413) 283-9715.

Most importantly, remember and affirm that your decision matters. Take the time to reflect on what you desire for your health care and what quality of life means for you. Then offer your gift of love by adequately communicating your choices so your wishes and life may be fully honored.

The Rev. Domenic K. Ciannella, an Episcopal priest, is hospice chaplain with Quaboag Valley Hospice of Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer. He is also certified as a grief recovery specialist and is well versed in crisis intervention and pastoral care.

Jan 19, 2011Yearning for Freedom and Control

Jane Brody wrote about advance care planning in yesterday’s New York Times and directed people to Compassion & Choices for our free Good to Go Guide. Our phones have never been busier. Everyone here has dropped their usual duties to answer calls and send materials to people all over the country. In just a few hours we counted 600 requests by telephone. Even greater numbers of people downloaded the documents directly from the website.

What’s the reason for this enormous demand? Once again, we see the simple, overwhelming desire of people everywhere to chart their own course as the end of their lives comes into view. A person’s last days may still be off in the distant horizon, but the yearning for a death that honors the life and the determination to remain a FREE person is palpable when thoughts turn to life’s end. .

Ms. Brody suggested people complete two documents. One is a Living Will to document your wishes. The other designates your Health Care Agent, to carry out your wishes with concrete decisions about procedures or treatments if you become unable to speak for yourself. The documents work in concert and sailing forth with only one means you’re boat is inherently leaky.

A Living Will alone is incomplete. It needs a designated agent: a specific person you charge to negotiate the death you feel fits the values and beliefs of a lifetime. It’s important to name this person, and most important, to talk with this person, preferably with other loved ones present. They will be able to confirm and validate future decisions so the agent doesn’t bear sole weight of responsibility.

A designated Health Care Agent (or Proxy) needs a Living Will as firm, undeniable evidence of your choices. Let’s face it; doctors may apply enormous pressure to accept tests and burdensome treatments with extremely low chance of recovery or substantial improvement. Your Healthcare Agent will need the strength of documentation to say with conviction, “I’m sure my dad would not want that, if there’s no chance he’ll return to a functioning life.”

I don’t think most doctors fully realize how deeply people care that their ideas and their principles, govern their end-of-life decisions. Doctors seem to think what matters most to people is how many days they exist on this planet.

No, doctors. For most people, it is not how long our days measure, but the measure of our days that grips our minds in the quiet moments of dawn. When we awaken early and thankfully greet another day, we nod to our acknowledged mortality and comfort ourselves with one hope — that our deaths will be on our own terms, in full expression of who we are and the life we lived.

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