Asked and Answered

A health care directive is a document that describes the treatment decisions that a person wants made in the future. It’s used to guide care if the patient can’t communicate in any other way at when a decision has to be made. A person needs to consider what others will need to know about his or her wishes. These wishes can be general or specific. 

Several factors are taken into account when deciding whether to continue radiation treatments: the wishes of the person who’s ill; the amount of radiation already delivered to the target area; the overall strength and energy of the person who’s ill. Patient’s wishes The main consideration is what the patient wants. If the person doesn’t want... 

Your current situation must seem overwhelming. So it’s natural to want to take control. In hospice, you can have a lot of control over your own health care. Before you enter hospice, it’s a good idea to meet with your health care team. They are the doctors and nurses who will provide your care. Review how you are feeling now and what might... 

Discontinuing life support is one of the most difficult and complex decisions a family can make. It may help to go through these steps in making your decision: Learn as much as you can about the medical situation and the likelihood of improvement. If your loved one prepared a health care directive , then use this to guide care decisions. If... 

It can be very difficult to make decisions about feeding when people can’t eat on their own. Tube feeding is not considered a basic part of care. Health care providers, ethicists and the courts consider it to be artificial nutrition and a medical treatment. This makes it comparable to other medical treatments such as dialysis or assisted breathing. 

Resuscitation can mean different things. Here it’s taken to mean cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). This is defined as the attempt to restore a heartbeat in someone whose heart has stopped beating and the attempt to restore breathing in someone who has stopped breathing. Decisions about resuscitation take into account many factors, a major...