Medical
Most of us are not medical professionals; many of us feel very disinclined towards learning any more than absolutely necessary about end of life issues. But when it comes to our own health and that of our loved ones, it helps to understand.
Determine what kind of care you'd like to receive, keeping in mind the importance of pain management and the question of the worthiness of the treatment for the person (not the worthiness of the person for the treatment).
- National Catholic Bioethics Center Individual Consultation Services (hotline or email)
Know what kind of help is needed
What is palliative care? (from the National Consensus Project's definition of Palliative care)
- Palliative care is patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering. Palliative care throughout the continuum of illness involves addressing physical, intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs and to facilitate patient autonomy, access to information and choice.
- The following features characterize palliative care philosophy and delivery:
- Care is provided and services are coordinated by an interdisciplinary team;
- Patients, families, palliative and non-palliative health care providers collaborate and communicate about care needs;
- Services are available concurrently with or independent of curative or life-prolonging care;
- Patient and family hopes for peace and dignity are supported throughout the course of illness, during the dying process, and after death
- A specialized kind of care for those facing a life-limiting illness, their families and their caregivers that
- addresses the physical needs of patients and their emotional, social and spiritual needs
- takes place in the patient’s home or in a home-like setting
- concentrates on making patients as free of pain and as comfortable as they want to be so they can make the most of the time that remains
- considers helping family members an essential part of its mission
- believes the quality of life to be as important as length of life
Hospice FAQ's, National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization
NHPCO’s Facts & Figures: Hospice Care in America, National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (2013
Prepare for what dying looks like.
One resource that frankly and clinically explains the process is How we Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter, by Sherwin Nuland, MD. Another is Gone from My Sight: The Dying Experience, by Barbara Karnes, RN.
Prudently choose the kind of care you need, where you plan to receive that care, and talk to your healthcare professionals
- Choosing a Hospice, National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization
- Ken Murray, “Why Doctors Die Differently,” Wall Street Journal (February 5, 2012)
- Mariann Hughes, “Hospice providers give care, comfort to elderly: Little Sisters of the Poor, Saint Jude Hospice offer friendship, compassion during life’s final stages,” Our Sunday Visitor (July 23, 2014)
- “How are patients going to trust their physicians to act with their best interests at heart and try to be healing them?” Donovan asked. “Patients should also be extremely afraid of a system that thinks that good care includes killing them.” Pro-life ... to the very end Despite the push to make physician-assisted suicide acceptable in society, death is not a choice we get to make, Mariann Hughes, OSV Newsweekly (7/23/2014)
- Having the Conversation with your Doctor
