Talk about end of life issues
…because the issue is everywhere (see post below) and the public debate is only ramping up because of the aggressive efforts of the right-to-die movement to change state laws. This coverage in USA Today yesterday reveals the inherent dilemma in crafting guidelines for such delicate decisions about life. Especially since it involves the individual, their family and loved ones, doctors, hospitals, laws and lawyers. What I think is particularly interesting about this coverage is the sidebar portion under “Talk it over with doctors, family.”
Is a living will enough? When planning end-of-life decisions, not always.
Legal and medical analysts encourage people preparing advance directives to talk over their wishes with their doctors, their family and their health care surrogate.
“The idea that we could somehow control all of this complicated communication through a piece of paper is asking way too much of the law,” says Bill Colby, an attorney who represented Nancy Cruzan in a 1990 landmark Supreme Court right-to-die case. The high court allowed a feeding tube to be removed from Cruzan, who had been left in a persistent vegetative state after a car accident seven years earlier.
Several states, including Oregon, Washington, New York and West Virginia, have begun programs that use forms known as POLST, or Physicians Order for Life Sustaining Treatment. These forms travel with the patient from one health care facility to another.
More important, they also translate the patient’s wishes into doctors’ orders, written onto medical charts. The forms are recognized by medical personnel from emergency medics to nursing staff and physicians at hospitals and nursing homes.
“Millions of people in this country have completed advance directives and think they have taken care of everything,” says Susan Tolle, a physician and director of the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, who pioneered Oregon’s POLST program. “But unless they have written orders to put wishes into action, you can’t be sure.”
Talk to your family and protect yourselves against someone else making the decision to take your life. Here’s one resource to start that process.
