Dr. Karen Wyatt discusses what’s new and noteworthy in the end-of-life arena this month:
- Medscape article reveals that 1/3 of all people in the US with advance directives actually request more medical intervention at the end-of-life, rather than choosing to limit medical intervention; question: What is “futile” care?
- Helsinki, Finland project allows young people to live at low cost within senior living centers in exchange for interacting with the elderly residents
- PEACH program in Toronto provides mobile palliative care to the homeless
- France has a “deep sleep bill” allowing terminal sedation that has passed the lower house of parliament
- National Geographic article shows interesting death customs of Torajan people of Indonesia
- Demonstration project for curative care occurring simultaneously with hospice care may be doomed because criteria for participation is too narrow and numbers are too small
- Video game “That Dragon, Cancer” has been released
- Stanford Letter Project is an interesting resource for creating advance directives in the form of a letter to physician, family members
- Parting.com has an interactive map that shows funeral costs in each state of the US; discussion about living funerals
- Tribute to 13 yo Delaney Clements who died this week and left us with a beautiful , joyful video expressing her wishes for her funeral
