BY SUSAN M. MATHEWS, PhD, RN, MSBE Autonomy, our right to make decisions for our own bodies, is the most powerful of all principles in medical ethics. Autonomy is what drives focus on advance care planning: considering, communicating and documenting end of life care preferences. Dying is draining, both physically and emotionally. A key stressor […]
My Aunt Rose, Chocolate Chip Cookies and a Conversation that Changed Our Relationship BY CRAIG KLUGMAN, Ph.D. When you are an ethics student writing your dissertation on end of life issues, you talk to a lot of people about what they hope for in their final days. In my immediate family, this was a fairly […]
Aging Responsibly and with Purpose BY SUSAN M. MATHEWS, PhD, RN, MSBE Incredibly, the old will soon outnumber the young. According to projections just released by the Census Bureau, the population of Americans 65 and older will exceed the number of children in 2035 for the first time in history. Additionally, this year’s prime-age workforce—ages […]
For the 86 percent of Americans who say they want to die at home, hospice programs make that desire increasingly possible. However, people often wait too long before seeking hospice care. In the United States, the average length of hospice care is less than 60 days. About 30 percent of those who elect hospice care […]
Getting On, an HBO workplace comedy set in a women’s geriatric clinic, features a director of medicine who collaborates with a hospice to provide bed space for the dying. The arrangement is lucrative, and it helps support the dubious research studies of the physician, Dr. Jenna James. She becomes greedy, though, and begins to enroll […]