For the first time in Connecticut’s history, the General Assembly’s Public Health Committee allowed a legislative hearing about a physician-assisted suicide bill.
H.B. 6645 aims to allow physicians the ability to prescribe life-ending medications at the request of mentally competent, terminally ill patients. Patients would have to self-administer the drug.
Connecticut’sCBS affiliate reports that because Democratic State Sen. Ed Meyer of Guilford received so many phone calls supporting “Death with Dignity,” he chose to author the bill, which he insists is both compassionate and cautious.
“The bill that we’re hearing today, for example, requires two different physicians to certify under oath that the person is terminally ill, likely to die within six months and is mentally competent to make an informed decision about ending his or her life,” Meyer told WCBS 880.
Washington, Oregon and Montana have already approved the legislation known as “Death with Dignity.”
“If the legislators see the bill as providing a choice, an intelligent choice for people making an informed decision to end their life and end the misery and pain they’re going through at the end of life, I think the bill will go forward,” Meyer said.
However, the bill faces strong opposition from religious and social organizations, such as the Family Institute of Connecticut and Second Thoughts Connecticut. Such opposition could hold-up the bill’s passage.
“We will be killing our vulnerable parents and grandparents through public policy,” said Teresa Wells, a nursing home administrator, according to the Hartford Courant.
The Catholic Church has also been a vocal critic. The Church cites the lack of wait time between the necessary oral and written requests for drugs. Other states require a 15 day wait.
Meyer said he remains open to suggestions.
Proponents of the bill argue it would ensure individual freedoms at the end of life. “The deep yearning for increasing autonomy for patients themselves to have a voice, I think now it’s reaching a tipping point all across the world,” Compassion and Choices’ Barbara Coombs Lee told CBS. “I think the Baby Boomer generation has something to do with that.”
A similar bill was proposed in 2009, but it failed to garner a hearing. Connecticut has banned assisted suicide since the late 1960s.
Read the bill at Connecticut’s General Assembly Web site
Montana lawmakers are considering a controversial bill to outlaw physician-assisted suicide, a decision that opponents say would punish doctors for honoring their dying patients’ wishes. If the bill passes, physicians who provide life-ending drugs could face 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Introduced by Rep. Krayton Kerns, a Republican, HB505 seeks to clarify “the offense of assisting in suicide,” after a 2009 Montana Supreme Court decision left many confused about the issue.
Known as the Baxter Decision, the court ruled physicians that prescribe life-ending drugs are safe from prosecution, because “nothing in Montana Supreme Court precedent or Montana statutes [indicates] that physician aid in dying is against public policy.” However, the decision did not address whether assisted suicide is a right guaranteed under the state Constitution.
Kerns insists the ruling needs clarification. ”The Baxter Decision did not establish legal assisted suicide in Montana, and this has remained a gray area,” Kerns told the Great FallsTribune. ”This bill would be a legislative declaration saying it is illegal based on constitution principles.”
According to the bill, “A person who purposely aids or solicits another person to commit suicide, including physician-assisted suicide, commits the offense of aiding or soliciting suicide.” Consent of the patient would not be a defense. However, withholding life-sustaining treatments from terminally ill patients would remain legal.
Critics argue the bill would curtail patients’ end of life choices. Opponent Bonnie Warne of Billings told the BillingsGazette that doctors who provide life-ending drugs to their patients would be unfairly attacked. “Death is inevitable and private. We do not need the state interfering with aid in dying,” she said.
Dan Lourie, from Bozeman, wrote a letter to the MontanaStandardarguing that if the bill passes, he would be forced to forfeit his doctor-patient privacy. “My position is that my end-of life choices should be between me and my doctor, and the Montana Supreme Court agrees with me,” he wrote. “It should be my right, and certainly will be my desire, to discuss all of my choices with my doctor — treatment options, my choice to refuse treatment, pursuit of comfort care and assistance in dying.”
Compassion and Choices, a non-profit that serves to expand end of life options, maintains the bill would “roll-back” end of life legislation.
“HB505 goes beyond just prohibiting aid in dying by putting a physician at risk of prosecution for answering a patient’s questions about any of a variety of death hastening options, such as directing deactivation of a cardiac device, directing withdrawal of a ventilator or feeding tube, or provision of palliative sedation; and a spouse, child or friend could be prosecuted for driving the patient to the doctor’s office for the discussion,” a statement posted on their Web site read.
If the bill were to pass, palliative care would still be allowed for terminally ill patients, because palliative care serves to manage pain and ease suffering.
The Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) program, designed to improve end of life care in Illinois, is on its way to implementation. Health care professionals met at Rush University Medical Center this week to discuss the form’s development and strategies for raising public awareness.
Julie Goldstein, M.D., a clinical ethicist and palliative care physician at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, provided the audience with hypothetical scenarios the POLST program form could remedy.
POLST program forms are more detailed than conventional living wills or other advance directives. They allow people to indicate preferences regarding resuscitation, intubation, intravenous antibiotics and feeding tubes. Such forms are intended for people who are likely in their last year of life. They can follow patients across in-state care settings and direct doctors to provide or withhold life-sustaining treatment in emergency situations.
The forms aim to more quickly direct doctors to a person’s wishes and eliminate confusion about what patients would want in the case that they are medically incapacitated and unable to communicate their wishes. The forms provide instructions in the case of a cardiopulmonary arrest (the person has no pulse and is not breathing), the degree of medical intervention they would want in a pre-arrest situation (the person has a pulse and/or is breathing), and whether or not they would want artificial nutrition if their medical illness prevented them from taking in adequate oral nutrition.
How a POLST form could help
A 67-year-old man is sent to the emergency room with chest pain and shortness of breath. He is also confused. The cardiologist says that a cardiac catheterization with angiogram and a stent are needed. The nurse tells the physician that there is a DNR order on his chart. Should the physician send the patient for an angiogram? It’s not clear.
If that patient had a POLST form that indicates DNR in case of full cardiac arrest but an order for full treatment in a pre-arrest emergency, the physician would immediately know what to do. The patient would be sent for the angiogram.
An 85-year-old man is admitted to the emergency room with severe pneumonia. He’s hypoxic, confused and refusing the ventilator. There is a DNR order on the charts. The physician feels that DNR doesn’t apply to this potentially reversible condition but the nurses disagree. He receives full resuscitation.
If that same patient had a POLST form indicating no CPR in the case of arrest and a preference for comfort care, the physician and nurses would have clear instructions. He would not have undergone full resuscitation, but would have been maintained in comfort with noninvasive maneuvers. .
A 59-year-old woman who is being treated for breast cancer is admitted to the emergency room for sepsis. She is transferred to intensive care and receives oxygen and maximum vasopressors. She has a DNR order on the charts. The staff are concerned that they are violating her wishes.
If she had a POLST form indicating no CPR in the case of arrest but limited interventions in addition to comfort measures, the staff may feel more comfortable treating her as they are doing and spend less time deliberating.
Massachusetts will vote on whether to allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients. Question 2 is known as “Death with Dignity,” and the measure will likely pass, even with strong opposition from outspoken patients, prominent physicians and the Roman Catholic Church.
Patient concerns
“As a good pro-choice liberal, I ought to support the effort. But as a lifelong disabled person, I cannot,” writesBen Mattlin for The New York Times Op-Ed page.
Author of Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity, Mattlin suffers from spinal muscular atrophy and fears that if Question 2 passes, it will allow for abuse against the elderly and disabled.
“There’s been scant evidence of abuse so far in Oregon, Washington and Montana, the three states where physician-assisted death is already legal, but abuse — whether spousal, child or elder — is notoriously underreported,” he writes. “What’s more, Massachusetts registered nearly 20,000 cases of elder abuse in 2010 alone.”
The initiative, referred to as “Prescribing Medication to End Life,” has a number of restrictions. Patients would have to be determined capable of making and communicating their health care decisions and have at most six months to live. Patients must also express a wish to die on two occasions, 15 days apart. A physician would be required to discuss the option of palliative care.
Mattlin raises the concern of coercion being a threat to the disabled and elderly. Having experienced a life in which eating, breathing and growing brought him pain, he sympathizes with those who may be one ‘talk’ away from ending life.
He writes: “My problem, ultimately, is this: I’ve lived so close to death for so long that I know how thin and porous the border between coercion and free choice is, how easy it is for someone to inadvertently influence you to feel devalued and hopeless — to pressure you ever so slightly but decidedly into being ‘reasonable,’ to unburdening others, to ‘letting go.’ ”
Physician concerns
Ezekiel J. Emanuel, former White House adviser, oncologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, stated his concerns about “Death with Dignity” in an Op-Ed for The New York Times.
noonquestion2.org
Ezekiel asserts that individuals who choose assisted suicide are not motivated by pain, so logically “Death with Dignity” should be reconsidered as a compassionate act.
“Only 22 percent of patients who died between 1998 and 2009 by assisted suicide … were in pain or afraid of being in pain,” he writes. “Patients themselves say that the primary motive is not to escape physical pain but psychological distress; the main drivers are depression, hopelessness and fear of loss of autonomy and control.”
His advice: focus on the dying process and not death itself.
“Instead of attempting to legalize physician-assisted suicide, we should focus our energies on what really matters: improving care for the dying.”
Earlier this year, Dr. Barbara Rockett, the former president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, criticized the initiative in The Boston Globe: “We as physicians must avoid the so-called slippery slope of attempting to save money by doing less for our patients rather than rendering the proper care to them. To substitute physician-assisted suicide for care represents an abandonment of the patient by the physician.”
Moral concerns from Roman Catholics
The Roman Catholic Church, the largest religious tradition in Massachusetts, also remains a vocal opponent to “Death with Dignity.” Tradition maintains that human life is sacred from conception to death; therefore, hastening death is a mortal sin.
yesondignity.com
The Globe’sChelsea Conaboyreports, “Catholic archdioceses from across the country contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Committee Against Physician Assisted Suicide, which raised $900,550 from late April to September.”
According to Boston’s NBC affiliate NECN, Catholics are organizing church by church against “Death with Dignity.” For example, St. Jerome Parish in Weymouth, Mass. is holding workshops encouraging parishioners to vote “no” on the initiative.
Question 2 likely to pass
According to Pew Research, 43 percent of Massachusetts residents identify as Catholics. Massachusetts has a larger percentage of Catholics than any other state.
The high percentage of Catholics is not, however, translating into statewide opposition to Question 2. A Suffolk University poll of likely voters shows 64 percent would vote “yes” and only 27 percent would vote “no.”
The Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) program, designed to improve the quality of end of life care, is on its way to implementation in Illinois. A task force made up of physicians, public health officials, chaplains and nurses is currently working to assemble and educate health care workers about the form.
POLST was developed in Oregon in the 1990s, and now 14 states have POLST programs. Twenty-eight states are considering the use of POLST forms.
POLSTs are more detailed than conventional living wills or advance directives. They allow patients to indicate preferences regarding resuscitation, intubation, intravenous antibiotics and feeding tubes. Such forms are intended for patients in their last year of life, and they can follow patients across care settings and direct doctors to provide or withhold lifesaving treatment.
Julie Goldstein, M.D., a palliative care and clinical ethics specialist at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, leads the POLST Illinois task force and spoke with Life Matters Media.
“I work at the bedside. I see the results of people not having thought about their future,” Goldstein said. “Their loved ones have to make their decisions at a loss. I think with no directives from the patient, the default approach is maximum treatment, despite burdens and if treatments can help.”
CECC
The Illinois Department of Public Health is currently looking over the proposed form. “Individuals may be able to have the POLST form by the New Year, but we don’t know for sure yet,” Goldstein said.
The Chicago End-of-Life Care Coalition, a non-profit working with the task force, maintains that every person has the right to accept or decline medical treatment. This right is maintained, POLST advocates say, even if a patient loses the capacity to make medical decisions. POLST is just one advance care option.
The POLST form is always intended to travel with a patient, whether that is in an ambulance en route to a hospital, or in the instance a patient moves into a long-term care facility.
“The POLST form differs from a DNR form in that it addresses more life-sustaining treatment options than CPR and is recognized and honored by all institutions along the healthcare continuum in the states where it is utilized,” according to the CECC.
A form directing physicians to withhold or continue lifesaving treatment for terminally ill patients is missing from statewide pilot program Honoring Choices Wisconsin, designed to educate more people about end of life care. The controversial Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) is excluded because critics, including Catholic bishops, say the form lays a foundation for euthanasia and abuse, while proponents consider the POLST an advocate for terminal patients’ rights.
“POLST is a physician order that does not need the patient’s own writing,” explains Katharine Karage, Advance Directives Coordinator at Mayo Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “POLST is four questions where the physician identifies with their patient what areas of care you want depending on what your illness is.”
POLSTs are more detailed than conventional living wills or advance directives. They allow patients to indicate preferences regarding resuscitation, intubation, intravenous antibiotics and feeding tubes. Such forms are intended for patients in their last year of life, and they can follow patients across care settings and direct doctors to provide or withhold lifesaving treatment.
Tim Bartholow, chief medical officer of the Wisconsin Medical Society, chose not to include POLST as part of the statewide pilot. “POLST is the lightning rod at the moment,” he told the Journal Sentinel. ”I think we’ll get there, but it could be three or four years before there’s consensus about this.”
POLST aims to ensure patient wishes are executed in hospitals and unexpected medical situations. POLSTs were first developed in Oregon during the 1990s.
A sample POLST obtained by the Journal states: “Any section not completed indicates full treatment for that section. When need occurs, first follow these orders. Then contact physician.”
“Families were saying, ‘Why can’t we talk to each other?’ and ‘If we write orders in one place, why are they ignored in another?” says Margaret Murphy Carley, executive director of the National POLST Paradigm Task Force at the Oregon Health and Science University. ”So you have an advanced directive. Where is it? In a drawer? In a safety deposit box? That’s the problem.”
Stephen Pavela, an internist with the Mayo Clinic Health System-Franciscan Healthcare in La Crosse, opposes statewide implementation, though Mayo has used POLSTs since 1997. ”POLSTs lock into place orders that in the moment might not be appropriate and might be dangerous,” he told the Journal.
Wisconsin’s Roman Catholic Bishops issued a warning against the use of POLST. “A POLST form presents options for treatments as if they were morally neutral,” the bishops wrote in a letter published by the Wisconsin Catholic Conference. “In fact they are not.”
The letter continues: “A POLST oversimplifies these decisions and bears the real risk that an indication may be made on it to withhold a treatment that, in particular circumstances, might be an act of euthanasia.”
Bud Hammes, who leads the Respecting Choices program at Gundersen Lutheran Hospital, says that opponents aren’t understanding the many issues that arise in end of life care. “I work shoulder to shoulder with doctors and nurses who care every day for dying patients. They see the pain. They see the suffering when there is not good planning.” The Respecting Choices program will train participating health systems and organizations to properly use POLST.
“What makes this program tick is the redesigning of health systems so that it becomes part of routine care. We need to make sure it’s not an afterthought, and not something the patient does on their own,” Hammes says.
The Journal reports that fifteen states have endorsed POLSTs with legislation or administrative rules protecting providers who sign and follow them from legal liability. Some 20 others are developing POLST programs.
Armond and Dorothy Rudolph, Courtesy Compassion & Choices
The choice to stop eating and drinking is a legal and ethical option to hasten death, says end of life counselor Judith Schwarz of Compassion and Choices, an organization that provides support to terminally ill patients. Schwarz discussed voluntary stopping of eating and drinking, or V.S.E.D., with Terry Gross on NPR’s weekday magazine, Fresh Air.
Compassion and Choices counselors can advise willing patients about informed decisions that may hasten death. “Many people have implanted cardiac devices and defibrillators,” as Schwarz explains. “Those need to be turned off if you want to get your death to happen naturally or in a more hastened fashion.” Some people also opt to stop taking medications.
Her organization facilitates talks with patients and families about the decision to stop eating and drinking. “It’s a process, it needs to be well understood. There needs to be support,” says Schwarz. “There are lots of things in place for it to be ‘successful.’ And by successful, I mean a peaceful death that happens within days or two weeks.”
Patients die of dehydration, not of starvation, she explains. This point is often misunderstood. Schwarz maintains that patients don’t even feel hunger, but they become drowsy from lack of hydration. As dehydration progresses, patients become sleepier. They then slip into a coma before death.
“It is often the case that people, as they get close to the end of life, just lose interest in their surroundings, in their loved ones and in food and fluid,” Schwarz says. “People have been dying this way for generations, for thousands of years.”
She acknowledges that forgoing water can be difficult, for both the patient and for his or her loved ones. “Some people have a really tough time with a dry mouth,” she says. “You need to have lots of supporting and skillful caregiving and oral care.”
V.S.E.D. is legal in every state for the terminally ill. “That a competent person can refuse any medical intervention, including tube feeding, has been recognized by the Supreme Court,” says Charles Sabatino in The New York Times. Sabatino directs the American Bar Association Commission on Law and Aging.
Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking remains controversial
However, Armond and Dorothy Rudolph, married for 69 years, were evicted last year from their assisted living facility in Albuquerque, N.M. for choosing to stop eating and drinking.
Mr. Rudolph, 92, suffered severe pain from spinal stenosis and had a permanent catheter. Mrs. Rudolph, 90, was immobile. Both suffered from the onset of dementia, and they consulted with Compassion and Choices about V.S.E.D.
Officials at their facility, the Village at Alameda, called 911 after learning of the couple’s plans to report attempted suicide.
Mrs. Rudolph later described her condition to The Albuquerque Journal. “Life is miserable,” Dorothy Rudolph said, when asked why she wants to die. “Our bodies are pretty rotten by now. You name it, I’ve had it.”
Squad vehicles and emergency personal arrived at the facility, with University of New Mexico’s emergency medicine department’s Dr. Drew Harrell.
“They were able to very appropriately and eloquently explain their wishes and what they wanted to have done,” Harrell said. “They didn’t feel the need to go to a hospital. They detailed that they wanted control over their own end of life issues.”
The couple’s son, Neil Rudolph, later spoke with ABC News. “Nearly 1 million Americans live in these facilities, yet most don’t know how their end of life rights could be infringed upon as my parents’ were,” he said. “Their eviction shocked me. I think it’s inhuman for mentally competent adults to be overruled at the end of their lives by an assisted living facility administrator, or by anyone else.”
The couple eventually moved to a private home, where Mr. Rudolph’s ten-day fast resulted in death. His wife died the next day, surrounded by family.
The facility released this statement: “Assisted living facilities are equipped to provide assistance with activities of daily living such as eating, dressing and bathing.
“If we can see that someone in our care requires alternate placement, medical attention or a level of care beyond the facility’s capabilities, we have an obligation to notify a medical provider.”
ABC News interviewedMarshall Kapp, director of the Florida State University Center for Innovative Collaboration in Medicine and Law, about the Rudolph ordeal.
“Legal apprehensions probably played a big part in their decision, along with the fear of bad publicity,” Kapp said about the Village at Alameda. “A facility retains the right to evict somebody if they can’t care for them properly most of the time, so you’d have to look at the contract they signed.”
Sabatino says that those who oppose the act for religious or ethical reasons (or for fear of lawsuits) can throw up roadblocks. “While the theory may be clean, the execution may get messy.”
According to a 2003 study on V.S.E.D. by the New England Journal of Medicine, most V.S.E.D. deaths are “good” deaths. Oregon hospice nurses explain, “Unbearable physical suffering did not appear to be an important reason for this choice. According to the nurses’ reports, most deaths from voluntary refusal of food and fluids were peaceful, with little suffering, although 8 percent of patients were thought to have had a relatively poor quality of death.”
Roman Catholics remain some of the most vocal opponents to the “Death with Dignity” initiative in Massachusetts, to which voters statewide will answer yes or no Nov. 6. The proposed action would allow physicians to prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients.
“The largest religious force in Massachusetts, the Roman Catholic Church, has come out squarely against the referendum, as have other prominent faith voices,” The Boston Globe’sLisa Wangness writes. “The church teaches that human life is sacred from conception to natural death, and that suicide in any form is a grave sin.”
Mass. Sec. of State
The Globe’sChelsea Conaboy also reports that, “Catholic archdioceses from across the country contributed tens of thousands of dollars to the Committee Against Physician Assisted Suicide, which raised $900,550 from late April to September.”
According to New England’s NBC affiliate NECN, Catholics are organizing church by church against “Death with Dignity.” For example, St. Jerome Parish in Weymouth, Mass. is holding workshops encouraging parishioners to vote “no” on the initiative, also known as Question 2.
The initiative referred to as “Prescribing Medication to End Life” has a number of restrictions. “Patients would have to be determined capable of making and communicating their health care decisions, have at most six months to live and voluntarily express a wish to die on two occasions, 15 days apart,” reports the Concord Journal. A patient and his or her physician would also be required to discuss the option of palliative care.
In a blog post for Boston, Dr. Marcia Angell, a supporter of the proposal, writes: “No physician is required to participate in assisted dying; he or she may refuse for any reason whatsoever. This is a choice, not a requirement, for both patients and physicians.” Dr. Angell is the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Massachusetts Medical Society and the Massachusetts Family Institute also oppose the act. The former president of the Society, Dr. Barbara Rockett, writes in a foil post: “We as physicians must avoid the so-called slippery slope of attempting to save money by doing less for our patients rather than rendering the proper care to them. To substitute physician-assisted suicide for care represents an abandonment of the patient by the physician.”
States currently allowing assisted suicide include: Oregon, Montana and Washington.
A 2012 study by the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine analyzed Oregon’s 1994 adoption of “Death with Dignity” and its Catholic response. According to the study, “The Church used its pulpits to urge Catholics to vote against Measure 16 (the Act) and make a political contribution to the Coalition for Compassionate Care,” similar to the current Massachusetts response.
However, one of the biggest differences between Oregon and Massachusetts is the Catholic population. “[S]ince Oregon had only a small percentage of Catholics in the state, most Oregon voters saw the Catholic Church’s involvement against Measure 16 as an attempt by organized religion to impose its views on the public,” Taylor E. Purvis writes.
According to Pew Research, 43 percent of Massachusetts residents claim the Catholic tradition as their religious preference. Massachusetts has a larger percentage of Catholics than any other state.
The high percentage of Catholics is not, however, translating into statewide opposition to Question 2. A new Suffolk University poll of likely voters shows 64 percent would vote “yes” and only 27 percent would vote “no” on the initiative.
Many of deep religious faith face an internal conflict when the dying process begins to overtake loved ones. The Rev. Tarris Rosell, the Rosemary Flanigan Chair, professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary and of the Center for Practical Bioethics,has addressed this dilemma in a blog post for ABC News.
Faith and reason seem incompatible to many religious, writes Rosell, because allowing hospice care or assisted death seems both faithless and cruel. While doctors often spout grim facts, the many religious continue to cling to hope.
Rosell recounts a disturbing story he read about a father who refused to let his daughter enter a hospice. The father believed his religion commanded him to save her.
Rosell writes: “I read this and wondered what sort of religion that man followed, ascribed to, and how badly he had misconstrued its actual teachings. I’m guessing that Dad and daughter had not talked this over, nor consulted faith leaders, in advance of her illness and dying. Too bad.”
Compassion is a constant in all religions, writes Rosell. “None of the world’s major religions insist on futile medical treatments or require adherents to demand of doctors what will not benefit patients. Religions differ on many matters of fact and faith; but most all of them teach compassion, the virtue of comforting the afflicted, and accepting the inevitability of physical death.” He believes the faithful actually act faithfully when compassion is the highest goal.
He offers some practical suggestions:
1. Complete your own advance directives, using documents available from your local hospital or online, such as Caring Conversations (free download atwww.practicalbioethics.org).
2. Give a copy of your advance directives to your faith leader(s), with a request to discuss them together sometime — and then make an appointment to do so.
3. Become familiar with the scriptures and teachings of your faith tradition, particularly as they address dying and death. Initiate a small group study of these issues with other persons in your community of faith.
4. Initiate an adult religious education event at which a local expert on these matters (e.g., a clinical ethicist, a palliative care or hospice provider, a healthcare attorney, a hospital social worker or chaplain) is invited to speak. Have advance directive forms available for distribution and use, along with a notary public.
5. Ask your faith leader about the possibility of observing a day of worship focused on advance care planning and compassionate care of the dying. Introduce her or him to “Compassion Sabbath”(www.practicalbioethics.org) or other available resources for such an observance.
6. Volunteer to lead an interfaith initiative on advance care planning with other congregations in your community. Introduce this concept and resources to the regional interfaith coalition. Ask that they consider launching a community-wide effort to increase advance care planning to improve quality of care for the dying.
Learn more about hospice care at the Life Matters Media Newswire.
In light of the healthcare debate, Pew Research decided to analyze a 2005 survey of Americans on end of life decisions pertaining to medical treatment and life support. The majority of Americans (84%) support laws protecting the right of the individual to decide if he/she wishes to be kept alive through medical treatments. It should be noted that only 53% of people surveyed said they would choose to end treatment if gravely ill.
Surprisingly, very few Americans do the one thing that may help their end of life decisions be carried out. Only 29% of those surveyed have a living will. It is more likely that older individuals (particularly women) with children tell their children their wishes.
Pew’s analysis of the research is available at pew.org.
