End-of-life Care News

By Judith Graham, Kaiser Health News “Don’t resuscitate this patient; he has a living will,” the nurse told Dr. Monica Williams-Murphy, handing her a document. Williams-Murphy looked at the sheet bearing the signature of the unconscious 78-year-old man, who’d been rushed from a nursing home to…

By Randi Belisomo (Reuters Health) - Sharing your “bucket list” could be easier than discussing end-of-life medical preferences, and it might be just as useful to your physician, researchers suggest. If you, like many Americans, have a “bucket list,” your doctor would be well-served by learning…

By April Dembosky, KQED, Kaiser Health News Many of Ron Fleming’s fellow soldiers have spent the past five decades trying to forget what they saw — and did — in Vietnam. But Fleming, now 74, has spent most of that time trying to hold on to it. He’s never been as proud as he was when he was 21.…

By Megumi Lim and Kim Kyung-Hoon TOKYO (Reuters) - After he was diagnosed with leukaemia in July, Katsuo Saito decided not to treat it and opted for palliative care. He had a hard time finding a bed at a hospice or hospital, so he spent most of his remaining weeks at home. "There are about 20…

By Kellen Browning  Frederick Bannon Jr. was by his mother’s side in intensive care as she fought a rare form of muscle cancer in late 2014. She was heavily sedated, but he felt confident making medical decisions for her, thanks to his family’s advance care planning. Bannon had difficult end-of-…

According to Senior Housing News, the state of New Jersey is piloting an electronic database in order to make end-of-life (EOL) care forms more accessible. The initiative is reportedly backed by the New Jersey Hospital Association and is called the Practitioners Orders for Life-sustaining…

According to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine, increasing obesity is associated with reduced hospice use and in-home death as well as lower-quality end-of-life care (published online February 7, 2017; doi:10.7326/M16-0749). Current research suggests that 70% of US adults aged 60…

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - More than a quarter of older U.S. Medicare beneficiaries have not done any advanced care planning, and Latinos, African Americans and people with low incomes are least likely to have made end-of-life arrangements, according to a new research letter. "We…

By Kathryn Doyle (Reuters Health) - Patients and families state that they value comfort, having time with family and death not being prolonged, but these values often don't align with the treatment they expect at the end of life, according to a new Canadian study. "Based on our clinical…

A recent UCLA study found that nearly half of nursing home (NH) residents in California completed end-of-life Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) in 2011, with no difference in completion of the form by race or ethnicity (Journal of General Internal Medicine 2016). This is the…