Resources to Prepare for End-of-Life Challenges
No one today needs to die in pain and suffering, and no one needs to receive unnecessary medical care. Here are some important resources to prepare for end-of-life challenges:
Consoling Communities: This life-affirming organization helps build community support during illness and grief. Please see Individual Support or Community Outreach. The Guide for Care and Support is an excellent resource for anyone who has been diagnosed with a serious or life-limiting illness or who is a caregiver.
The Christian Medical Dental Association provides up-to-date information on the ethical and medical aspects of End of Life Care decisions.
Enormous advances have been made in end of life medical care in just the last ten years. An entire new specialty in medicine has sprung up, called Hospice and Palliative Medicine, with thousands of physicians now certified as experts in hospice and palliative medicine*. Greater experience and advances in the use of medicines now allow physicians to control all symptoms of pain and anxiety at end of life. The hospice movement has been growing and growing; while still unfortunately underutilized by both physicians and the public, hospice provides people at end of life the ability to die in their home surrounded by those that they love.
Caring Connections from the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. This web site has excellent articles and resources for people with life-limiting illnesses and their caregivers.
Many options exist for patients to decide exactly what kind of medical care they will receive and what care they will not receive. From the simplest DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) orders for people who elect not to have CPR or be placed on a ventilator, to POLST forms, to Advance Directives such as Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care, everyone can and should discuss with their family members and their doctor what kind of care and intervention levels they want, so that they do not find themselves receiving care they would not have chosen. The following is a list of options patients and family members should explore, with links for more information.
By availing yourself of these options to determine the kind of interventions you wish to receive, and with the help of the hospice system and with expert physicians such as those board-certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, no patient should ever feel trapped into taking their own lives.
* Did you know? The vast majority of physicians reject assisted suicide, with only a very small minority of physicians supporting it. The less physicians know about pain control and palliative medicine, the more likely they are to favor assisted suicide, while the more physicians know about pain control and palliative medicine, the less likely they are to favor assisted suicide. Tragically, Washington State law does not require doctors advising patients about assisted suicide to know anything at all about palliative medicine or hospice options, much less require them to make a referral to a physician who is an expert. In many cases this may leave patients completely uninformed about their options and effectively trapped by their physician's ignorance into choosing the only option their suicide doctor knows anything about, which is assisted suicide.
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