Avoiding Inappropriate Health Care with Advance Directives
An article in the Los Angeles Times, “Having to think about the unthinkable“, discussing advance healthcare directives assumes greater significance since we recently blogged about “inappropriate care“.
An advance healthcare directive allows someone to: “authorise a loved one or someone else to have power of attorney — or serve as your agent — to make healthcare decisions for you if you’re unable.”
The article begins with a quote from Dr. Neil S. Wenger, Director of UCLA’s Health System Ethics Center:
“I could show you case after case, I could bet you million-to-1 odds these patients would not want to be in this situation.”
He was talking about patients in critical condition who are “attached to machines, being kept alive” in hospitals, many of them suffering.
The answer, the author goes on to say, lies in people leaving advance directives.
It is not too soon for us to start doing it in India!
Thanks to Ms Sunshine Mugrabi for bringing this to our attention.
LA Times columnist, Steve Lopez, has many more interesting columns in his “Matters of life & death” series.
Comments are closed.
