Tag / advance directives
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Difficult Decisions in Health Care
What does quality of life mean?
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Beyond Living Wills
Are living wills too ambiguous to guide medical decision making?
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Advance Directives – Are They Effective?
Have advance directives led to progress in patients’ rights?
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Caring Conversations – A Partnership Between You and Your Agent
Appointing an agent is the beginning of a partnership.
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The Case of Jennie M: To Tube Feed or Not
Jennie has an advance directive which does not address artificial nutrition. Who makes this decision now that Jennie can’t speak for herself?
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After the Heart Attack – Sister Rosemary Flanigan, PhD
In early 2012, at age 85, Dr. Rosemary Flanigan suffered and survived a heart attack. Fifteen years earlier, Dr. Flanigan wrote: “It makes me mad…
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The Case of Freda: Nursing Staff in Moral Distress When Patient’s Wishes Not Followed
Freda is a thirty-two-year-old woman in an advanced fixed stage of multiple sclerosis. Freda’s inability to swallow has caused her to lose weight to the point that she is clinically malnourished. Freda’s mother insists on insertion of a gastric feeding tube, which puts the nursing staff in a high state of moral distress.
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Case Study – Our Pregnant Daughter Didn’t Want This.
Is a healthcare directive legally in effect if the patient is pregnant?
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Case Study – Matter of Quinlan
Evidence in the case included statements the patient made earlier referring to her “distaste for continuance of life by extraordinary medical procedures.” These statements were deemed by the court as remote, impersonal and lacking trial “probative weight.” The trial court refused the order to withdraw life-supporting apparatus. The father/guardian appealed.
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The Case of Grace: Why Are They Doing All This?
Shortly after she retired, Grace, who has never married, sold her home and moved into Happy Valley Nursing Home where she has lived the past nine years and has now slipped into what the doctor agrees is Alzheimer’s disease. Grace started exhibiting signs of illness, which after blood tests, appears to be related to abnormal function of her spleen.
