advance directives – Page 3 – The Good Death Society Blog

March 24, 2019March 25, 2019

Postscript to Professor Pope’s research into LSMT: ADs and surrogates

In the previous five posts, I discussed Professor Thaddeus Pope's legal research on life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT) and end-of-life medical care. Two important points about advance directives (ADs) are not covered in Professor Pope's treatise because they are not issues that are normally litigated. (Continue reading ...)

March 17, 2019

Refusing unwanted medical treatment–Part 5: Physician liability, continued

This is the final post of the series reviewing Professor Thaddeus Pope's analysis of why clinicians perceive that not following a patient's preferences about end-of-life care carries little risk for them. Additional legal remedies (causes of action available against clinicians who ignore patient choices), along with administrative penalties, and possible criminal liability for clinicians in some jurisdictions are discussed. (Continue reading ...)

March 10, 2019

Refusing unwanted medical treatment–Part 4: Physician liability

In Part 4 of this review of Professor Thaddeus Pope's analysis of liability for a clinician's providing unwanted life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT), the focus is on on why clinicians perceive that not following a patient's preferences about end-of-life care carries little risk for them and looking at more recent successful causes of action against clinicians. (Continue reading ...)

March 3, 2019

Refusing unwanted medical treatment, Part 3: Why ADs sometimes fail

In this, Part 3 of my review of Professor Thaddeus Pope's paper about the legal issues surrounding unwanted life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT), I focus on problems with advance directives (ADs). (Continue reading ...)

February 24, 2019

Refusing unwanted medical treatment–Part 2

In Part 1, I provided an actual case of unwanted life-sustaining medical treatment (LSMT), listed Professor Pope's "Twelve Leading Causes of Unwanted Life-Sustaining Treatment," gave the causes of action that may be available for unwanted LSMT, and briefly discussed Physician's Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) and other similar documents used in various states. Here, in Part 2, I delve further into Professor Pope's research on unwanted LSMT. (Continue reading ...)

January 27, 2019

The reality of existential suffering

If we use "existential suffering" as a stand-in for all of the related terms we use, it will help us discuss what we may mean by them. Certainly, distress, dread, angst, anxiety, anguish, or crisis all suggest suffering at least in a mental or psychological sense, a kind of suffering that all people encounter at one point or another in their lives, or even daily. Some existential suffering can be mitigated through changes in circumstances or with the help of others, but when one is dying, whether slowly or rapidly, one may wish to forego the suffering whether or not there may be temporary relief for it. (Continue reading ...)

November 25, 2018November 26, 2018

Notes on a lecture by Thaddeus Pope about a VSED dementia advance directive

Lamar Hankins shares his notes taken from a lecture by Professor Thaddeus Pope, who spoke on the topic "Avoiding Advanced Dementia with a VSED Directive" for the Hemlock Society of San Diego. (Continue reading ...)

August 19, 2018July 23, 2019

Fashioning an advance directive for dementia

This post lays out a process for making a dementia directive to be used when or if we become unable to make our own views known because of mental incapacity. If you are willing to live with dementia through the end of the disease, this post will not be of use to you. (Continue reading ...)

August 12, 2018August 12, 2018

The Society for Humanistic Judaism and MAID

The Society for Humanistic Judaism (SHJ) supports the right of all people to decide when their lives should end. This post looks at the SHJ's position on physician-assisted death. (Continue reading ...)

August 4, 2018

Advance care planning for dementia: a case study–Part 2

In Part 2 of this post about dementia, disability, and advance directives, Lamar Hankins challenges Dresser's assertion that an advance directive that calls for allowing a person to die in the later stages of dementia should be ignored in favor of her view of what care is appropriate. (Continue reading ...)

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