An excellent blog post!
This quote stood out the most for me, “This family had planned and communicated about end-of-life issues more than most ever do, but they still hadn’t been shown how to kick the ball through the goal post.”
How does a family, a patient ensure their Advance Care Directive is followed/honored?“The advance directive should be seen as a conversation starter, an idea generator, a philosophical tool. It is a guide for your loved ones to work with your doctors and make decisions that are based on your goals and values as the situation unfolds. Its purpose is to chart the broad strokes, to delineate the guiding principles.
But it simply cannot be a detailed list of dos and don’ts.”
More education, more training for both professionals and lay people is needed re: this topic.
“Three abstractions: love, time, and death. Love, we all long for it; time, we all want more of it; and death, we fear”- from the movie; Collateral Beauty
NorthernMSW: Advocacy, Education/Guidance on Grief 