In observance of National Healthcare Decisions Day, Life Care Center of Hilo social service workers will provide an opportunity for members of the community to complete their advance directives for free by appointment April 18.
In observance of National Healthcare Decisions Day, Life Care Center of Hilo social service workers will provide an opportunity for members of the community to complete their advance directives for free by appointment April 18.
Completing an advance directive for health care can include naming someone to speak for the person if the person cannot speak for him or herself. Situations such as accidents, major strokes or severe injury to the body can cause someone to not be able to have good judgment and might require an advance directive.
Advance directives also can include directions on how aggressively the person would like modern medicine to treat end-of-life issues. Decisions about using artificial hydration, nutrition and amount of pain medicine are important questions to have a known preference especially when a person cannot speak.
Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatments, or POLST, forms also will be available at the Life Care Center. This document allows the person to express whether or not he or she would like resuscitation and artificial feeding. The person has a discussion with his or her physician, and the person completing the document and the physician sign the form.
“I serve on several hospital ethics committees as part of my health law practice and I am repeatedly confronted with a very disturbing issue,” said Nathan Kottkamp, chairman of National Healthcare Decisions Day. “Time and time again, families, providers and hospital administrators struggle to interpret the wishes of patients who never made their health care wishes known (or failed to complete an advance directive to record their stated wishes).
“These families and professionals do their best to advocate for what they believe their loved ones or the patient would want or is in their best interests, but they are inherently doing so without any guidance, and it is agonizing.
“I founded National Healthcare Decisions Day because I know that we — both potential patients and health care providers — can do a much better job of making our wishes known and then honoring those wishes to avoid these very sad situations.”
Since 2008, NHDD has resulted in more than 1 million health care providers receiving advance directives education, Kottkamp said.
To make an appointment, call social services at Life Care Center of Hilo at 959-9151.