Word: patient
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...willing to lend a hand in bringing lives to a close--and not all of those physicians are in Oregon. Many doctors admit to being willing to administer so-called terminal sedation, raising drug levels high enough to induce a fatal coma. Others simply increase morphine doses until the patient stops breathing. In 1998 the New England Journal of Medicine published a physician survey showing that when patients asked for lethal prescriptions, 16% of doctors complied, albeit quietly. "Aid in dying happens in every state," says assemblywoman Patty Berg, co-sponsor of the California bill. "We need to bring...
...with the idea of speeding up the process. The American Medical Association remains opposed to any aid-in-dying laws, and the group speaks for a lot of its members. "When a doctor writes a prescription for lethal drugs," says Portland, Ore., radiologist Kenneth Stevens, "the message to the patient is, 'I don't value you or your life...
...years ago, Sullivan, a retired bookkeeper, received a diagnosis of ALS--amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease--which paralyzes and eventually suffocates the patient. She asked her Portland doctors to prescribe lethal medicine, but even as her condition has deteriorated and her pain has increased, they have refused to discuss it. "They are young," she says. "They don't understand the pains of the elderly." She has a date with a new doctor this month but fears that by then her muscle constriction won't allow her to swallow--and self-administering the drugs...
...legal right to make decisions for an incapacitated patient varies by state (see map on page 30), but the reality of family dynamics is that those choices are often made by consensus. Health-care professionals who frequently deal with families in those situations offer two broad pieces of advice. First, "Everybody needs to hear the same thing" about the patient's prognosis, says Bruce Ambuel, a psychologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. "Otherwise you have different people hearing different things from different specialists at different times, and it just sows the seeds of conflict." Second, family members...
...burdens on a family are significantly reduced when the patient has made decisions in advance--for instance, choosing a surrogate to act on his or her behalf by filling out a durable power of attorney for health care. A living will, also known as an advance directive, helps a proxy understand the patient's wishes--and "avoids the suspicion that a family is doing something for ulterior motives," notes Prager...