Tag: end-of-life
Persistent Gaps in Use of Advance Directives Among Nursing Home Residents Receiving Maintenance Dialysis
Patients with end-stage renal disease receiving dialysis have a symptom burden and prognosis comparable to patients with incurable cancer. They frequently and increasingly receive intensive procedures near the end of life.... read more
How to Ensure Your Medical Wishes Are Followed if You’re Critically Ill and Incapacitated
It happens every day in the intensive care units of hospitals throughout the country: Physicians ask the loved ones of someone kept alive by a ventilator and other medical devices whether the patient would want to live hooked... read more
Integrating Advance Care Planning into Practice
Advanced respiratory diseases progress over time and often lead to death. As their condition worsens, patients may lose medical decision making ability. Advance care planning (ACP) is a process in which patients receive information... read more
Pricey Technology Is Keeping People Alive Who Don’t Want to Live
As an ICU physician, I’ve used technologies like breathing machines and feeding tubes to save lives that would have been lost just a few decades earlier. But I’ve also seen the substantial costs, both human and financial,... read more
Learning to talk about death should start early in doctors' careers
At first glance, physicians’ poor understanding of death and the process of dying is baffling, since they are supposed to be custodians of health across the lifespan. Look deeper, though, and it may reflect less the attitudes... read more
Never Stop Caring
I read with interest the piece by Wilson et al regarding their examination of end-of-life care patterns in hospitalized patients on their vascular surgery practice in Oregon. I applaud the authors for examining their practices... read more
SCCM Congress Session Centers on Physician-Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia (PAS/E) is a topic of intense debate in society, not least among critical care medicine specialists, who treat many patients at or near the end of life. Watch a video that features... read more
Experiences and Expressions of Spirituality At the End of Life in the ICU
Family members and clinicians consider spirituality an important dimension of end-of-life care. The 3 Wishes Project invites and supports the expression of myriad forms of spirituality during the dying process in the ICU.... read more
