April 16, 2009 is National Healthcare Decisions Day. The Web site for this national initiative has many useful links and resources.
A booklet in both English and Spanish, published by the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to help patients and family members understand and complete Health Care Proxy and Living Will forms.
Your Life, Your Choices is a workbook designed to assist patients and family members with developing advance directives. The workbook has two major goals: to help individuals personalize their advance directives, and to help them talk with their family members and health care providers about how they would want to be treated medically if they were so ill that they could not speak for themselves. This workbook was written by Robert Pearlman, MD MPH, Helene Starks, MPH, Kevin Cain, PhD, William Cole, PhD, David Rosengren, PhD, and Donald Patrick, PhD MSPH with support from the Health Services Research and Development Service in the Office of Research and Development (R&D), Department of Veteran Affairs (VA).
The link above is to a commercial Web site (A & A Publishers) that makes available a full-text PDF of the book Hard Choices for Loving People by Hank Dunn. This book covers the most common medical treatment decisions faced by those who are living with a life-threatening illness. CPR (resuscitation efforts), artificial feeding, hospitalization of an ill person and shifting to a hospice approach are all considered in depth. Besides these most common treatment decisions, there are sections on ventilators, dialysis, antibiotics and pain control. Also, at the end of the chapters on CPR, Artificial Feeding and Comfort Care/Hospice there is a section on making these treatment choices for children.
The non-profit Aging with Dignity publishes this living will form with detailed guidelines for helping patients think about how how they want to be treated if seriously ill and unable to speak for themselves. It includes medical, personal, emotional and spiritual needs and encourages people to discuss their wishes with their family and physician.
Send Feedback to: 
