Photo by Shutr

Last week The Hastings Center released an article on how hospice care is related to Oregon's Death with Dignity law. It's a very compelling study from a think tank that has been a leader in presenting a non-biased view of end-of-life care for over 40 years. The two main findings were "terminally ill patients seeking physician-assisted death are receiving high-quality palliative care," and "hospice programs are regarded as an important societal mechanism to assure that physician-assisted death is practiced responsibly."

These are quite encouraging findings for terminally ill individuals. Pain-relieving palliative care and the support system hospices can offer are very important for terminally ill people if they decide to hasten their death. Even beyond the individual patient, the holistic approach of hospices ensure the entire family has resources to work through this difficult process. Hospice and palliative care are critical pieces of an entire patient-centered model which includes the option of physician-assisted death and lends peace of mind to a dying person and their family.

News

Photo by Marco

August has been a month of awakening for the Death with Dignity movement and end-of-life discussions. Here are some of the highlights:

• Two well-timed articles about the importance of end-of-life discussions are creating quite the buzz. Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article from the beginning of the month kicked off the discussion, and was soon followed by an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine about how palliative care extends life in patients with terminal lung cancer. These two articles set off a firestorm of responses on blogs, news sites as well as radio and television programs.