National Healthcare Decisions Day

In honor of National Healthcare Decisions Day, Life Care Center of Hilo Social Service workers will provide an opportunity for community members to complete their advance directives Thursday, April 16, for free.

Completing an advance directive for health care might include naming someone to speak for the person if the person cannot speak for him/herself. Situations such as accidents, major strokes and severe injury to the body can cause someone to not be able to have good judgment and might require an advance directive.

Advance directives might also include directions on how aggressively the person would like modern medicine to treat end-of-life issues. Decisions about using artificial hydration, nutrition and amount of pain medicine are important questions to have a known preference, even when a person cannot speak.

Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments (POLST) forms also will be available at Life Care Center’s Social Service Office. This document allows the person to express whether or not he/she would like resuscitation and artificial feeding. The person has a discussion with his/her physician, and the person completing the document and the physician sign the form.

“I serve on several hospital ethics committees as part of my health law practice, and I am repeatedly confronted with a very disturbing issue,” said Nathan Kottkamp, chairman of National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD). “Time and time again, families, providers and hospital administrators struggle to interpret the wishes of patients who never made their healthcare 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.”

Since 2008, NHDD has resulted in more than a million health care providers receiving advance directives education, more than half a million members of the general public receiving education, more than 14,000 advance directives being completed, and it has helped raise awareness of the importance of advance care planning, inspire activity that likely would not have taken place otherwise and forged several new collaborative efforts.

“I hope that everyone will realize that advance care planning is a gift to loved ones,” Kottkamp said. “Studies suggest that most of us know that we should ‘have the talk,’ but only about a quarter of us have. I hope that people will mark their calendars for April 16 in Hilo, assemble their loved ones and just do it. Sometimes, we just need a catalyst. National Healthcare Decisions Day is it.”

Call Social Services at Life Care Center at 959-9151 for an appointment.