In honor of National Healthcare Decisions Day on Monday, April 16, Life Care Center of Hilo social service workers will be providing an opportunity for members of the community to complete free advance directives.
In honor of National Healthcare Decisions Day on Monday, April 16, Life Care Center of Hilo social service workers will be providing an opportunity for members of the community to complete free advance directives.
Completing an advance directive for health care may include naming someone to speak for the person if one cannot speak for himself/herself. Situations such as accidents, major strokes or severe injury to the body can cause someone to not be able to have good judgment and may require an advance directive.
Advance directives may also include directions on how aggressively the person would like modern medicine to treat end of life issues. Decisions about utilizing artificial hydration, nutrition and amount of pain medicine are important questions to have a preference even when a person cannot speak.
The Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments (POLST) form also will be available. This form, recently approved by the state, lets a person express whether or not he/she would like resuscitation and artificial feeding. The person has a discussion with his/her physician and both the person completing the document and the physician signs the form.
Nathan Kottkamp, chairman of National Healthcare Decisions Day, said, “I serve on several hospital ethics committees as part of my health law practice, and I am repeatedly confronted with a very disturbing issue. Time and time again, families, providers, and hospital administrators struggle to interpret the wishes of patients who never made their health care wishes known (or failed to complete an advance directive to record their stated wishes). These families and professionals do their best to advocate for what they believe their loved ones or the patient would want or is in their best interests, but they are inherently doing so without any guidance, and it is agonizing.
“I founded National Healthcare Decisions Day because I know that we — both potential patients and health care providers — can do a much better job of making our wishes known and then honoring those wishes to avoid these very sad situations.”
Please call Life Care Center at 959-9151 for an appointment.