End-Of-Life Care Group Reaches Key Benchmarks In Helping Health Care Providers, Communities Statewide Prepare For Medical Aid-In-Dying Law
https://www.news-line.com/PH_news27492_enews
Compassion & Choices Hawai’i today announced that its public education campaign about the Our Care, Our Choice Act has met several key benchmarks in preparation for the law to take effect on January 1, 2019
Signed into law on April 5 by Governor David Ige, the Our Care, Our Choice Act authorizes medical aid in dying as an end-of-life care option to end unbearable suffering. It is the medical practice which gives terminally ill adults with a prognosis of six months or fewer to live, and who are mentally capable of making their own healthcare decisions, the option of requesting from their doctor a prescription for medication to die peacefully in their sleep.
Compassion & Choices’ Hawai’i Access Campaign is a volunteer-led effort to educate the community, healthcare professionals, health systems and hospices to ensure terminally ill adults in Hawai’i have access to the new law. To date:
•The Campaign has provided hospital and hospice systems statewide with sample policy templates that can be customized to each system.
•For healthcare professionals, the online resource www.compassionandchoices.org/hawaii features Doc2Doc and Pharmacist2Pharmacist consultation services and training videos. In addition, Compassion & Choices is working with the Hawaii •Department of Health advisory group to provide in-person education for physicians and other providers.
•Dr. David Grube, national medical director for Compassion & Choices, is in Hawaii this week presenting “Medical Aid in Dying: A Physician’s Perspective” to physician groups including the Hawaii Society of Clinical Oncologists, Castle Hospital, palliative care doctors and the Department of Health.
•For healthcare consumers, the website features a video for residents explaining medical aid in dying, fact sheets and other important documents in English, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilocano, Mandarin, Hawaiian and Spanish.
•A series of presentations for the community and for medical professionals will be held on the Big Island in Kona, Waimea and Hilo Oct. 23-24 (to register call the Office of Senator Lorraine Inouye at 974-5000, ext. 67335); other islands are being scheduled.
•The Hawaii Psychological Association will provide a special focus on the Our Care, Our Choice Act and training for mental health practitioners during its annual convention, October 26-27.
Compassion & Choices has over 20 years of experience helping states successfully implement medical aid-in-dying laws.
“We know from experience that when this law goes into effect on January 1st—10 weeks from now—there will be dying patients making requests of their doctors for this compassionate end-of-life care option so medical providers need to be ready,” said Kat West, national director of policy and programs. “That’s why Compassion & Choices has begun reaching out to healthcare systems, hospices, physicians and pharmacists to help them prepare.”
Compassion & Choices’ Hawai’i Access Campaign will continue to:
•support local public outreach & education teams on each island;
•provide free education and materials for doctors, pharmacists, nurses and other healthcare providers including webinars, videos and Doc2Doc consultation calls;
provide technical and policy assistance to hospitals, clinics, hospice facilities and •pharmacies statewide; and
•work with government agencies, medical associations, and other ancillary organizations to ensure broad understanding of the law and meaningful access for those who need it.
Educational resources for patients and providers can be found at CompassionAndChoices.org/Hawaii.
As always, open and proactive patient-provider discussion about all end-of-life care options is key to smooth and successful preparation to improve end-of-life care and implement the law in a timely fashion.
“We encourage residents, no matter which island they reside on, to initiate conversations with their doctors now about whether their doctor would support them if they were to become terminally ill and request medical aid in dying. We know from experience it is only way that residents can ensure that they will get the care they want at the end of life,” West said.
Compassion & Choices Hawai’i is the local affiliate of Compassion & Choices, the nation’s oldest, largest and most active nonprofit organization committed to improving care and expanding choice at the end of life. For more information call 808-282-8247 or visit www.compassionandchoices.org/Hawaii..
Filed under: General Problems
Unfortunately Trump is now considering X-GOVERNOR CHRIS CRISTIE AND PAM BONDI who will be worse than Sessions if that’s possible. Trump’s the idiot—- he thinks if you break a leg and take oipioids for 3 days you become an addict.
I’m sorry but I believe in death with dignity in the sense that if I’m TERMINAL, I WANT TO HAVE OIPIOIDS FOR PAIN RELIEF! Right now even oncologists won’t write a script for cancer patients– they are being told ,”I’m NOT losing my license for your pain!” And cancer was supposed to be exempt from the Guidelines.
Maybe I’m missing something—- but don’t all CPP’s want death with dignity on those terms?
Sheila, I know you are discouraged like all of us CPP’s. I think we should also be bombarding major news media (ABC,CBS,NBC AND FOX) with emails to their News Editors (contacts are online, just Google)—- with the facts, esp. the difference between addiction and dependence. We can’t give up.
ADDICTION: People with no pain who take drugs recreationally, produce great amounts of Dopamine by their neurotransmitters. Dopamine is the feel-good agent which creates the euphoria and cravings.
DEPENDENCE: People with moderate to severe pain don’t become addicted because we don’t create Dopamine, we just get an effective sense of pain reduction. We go through withdrawal but that does NOT make us addicts.
EVERYONE needs to educate EVERYONE ELSE about these definitions.
It still of course misses the elephant in the room, namely, what can be done to hold off unbearable suffering? Some folks have used and have been thankful for and NEEDED HIGH doses or pain killer and were successful over decades when just from untreated pain alone their condition would instantly become terminal.
What has our country become when it is acceptible in society that a suffering, terminally ill patient can choose to ingest poisonis medications to die with dignity. But, a person suffering with an uncurable disease, not terminal, is denied the right to obtain medication in order to LIVE a pain free, dignified life?? This really is a govt intent on eliminating the ill, disabled drain on society. Why everyone of us is not up in arms over this disgusting violation of human rights is beyond me. We need a better National Movement to bring this vile nazi-induced plan to everyones attention. I am so sick of letter writting, signing petitions, contacting every bureacracy involved, letters to Potus, etc…AND NOTHING IS HAVING ANY EFFECT! Im sick of ready stories of ppl suffering and the suicides when all else fails. I wish I new what else I can do to try to fix this and to wake ppl up to whats going on. This has very little to do with Healthcare, and more to do with suppression and the downfall of humanity and human rights. WAKE UP PEOPLE.
Sessions is an idiot& hasn’t a clue to what’s happening. Trump needs a different AG
Goodbye Sessions replace the idiot!