“Does the contract allow you to have access to your own doctors? What is the facility’s position on VSED? If you enter hospice, will they commit to providing adequate pain relief? If you live in a state with MAiD, will the facility cooperate?”
“Many of the individuals around the bedside barely know each other, and this becomes an environment of misinformation, mistrust, and hidden agendas about substantial financial and estate issues … as ex-wives and ex-husbands, half siblings who never knew each other, long-time same-sex partners (surprise, who knew?), in-laws, out-laws show up at the bedside.” — Dr. Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
“One of our team nurses shared that her only training on caring for the dying involved a lecture from a funeral home manager.”
“I dislike the phrase, ‘They failed treatment.’ The amount of judgment within this phrase is damaging.”
“To be ‘death positive’ doesn’t mean that you are happy about dying.”
“One facility used the term “provider-hastened death” and stated that it encompasses euthanasia.”
“Whose wishes for his medical treatment were we to honor? Those of my father back when he was a healthy, highly functioning geneticist? Or those of the simpler, weakened man my father had become?”
“If these five reasons don’t make a strong enough case for physicians to engage with their patients in advance care planning, here’s one more: it is simply the right thing to do.”
“Is it quality of life? Is it living as long as you can? Is it being comfortable? Those are the kinds of things that I wish we had talked about.”
“Having a sense of the possibilities in advance is essential to minimize surprises, make specific requests for end-of-life symptom management, and decide the possible paths available to you.”
