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Return to Home Page Following are medical professionals that offer information, commentary, or experiences regarding health care decision-making by individuals or by their agents/representatives. These links are provided for illustrative purposes only. Use them in your own discretion. Act with the advice of a qualified professional.


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MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS:

  • Annals of Internal Medicine:

    • "National Quality-of-Care Standards in Home-Based Primary Care", by Kristofer L. Smith, MD, MPP, Theresa A. Soriano, MD, MPH, & Jeremy Boal, MD. (Vol. 146, Issue 3, Pages 188-192).
    • Synopsis: Home-based primary care for homebound seniors is complex, and practice constraints are unique. No quality-of-care standards exist. The objective is to identify process quality indicators that are essential to high-quality, home-based primary care.

  • Archives of Internal Medicine:

    • "Toward Shared Decision Making at the End of Life in Intensive Care Units: Opportunities for Improvement", by Douglas B. White, MD, MAS; Clarence H. Braddock III, MD, MPH; Sylvia Bereknyei; & J. Randall Curtis, MD, MPH (Journal of Internal Medicine2007;167:461-467).
      • Synopsis: "In North America, families generally wish to be involved in end-of-life decisions when the patient cannot participate, yet little is known about the extent to which shared decision making occurs in intensive care units. * * * [Conclusions:] Shared decision making about end-of-life treatment choices was often incomplete, especially among less educated families. Higher levels of shared decision making were associated with greater family satisfaction. Shared decision making may be an important area for quality improvement in intensive care units."

  • AskMe3

    • Mission: The Partnership for Clear Health Communication is a coalition of national organizations that are working together to promote awareness and solutions around the issue of low health literacy and its effect on health outcomes.

  • Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

    • "Families chafe at physicians' power to give up life support" -- Courts left to decide who holds patient's fate, by Andria Simmons,published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (02/08/08).
      • Excerpt: From a legal standpoint, being brain-dead is the same as being dead.Before a patient can be declared brain-dead, two doctors must evaluate the patient on two occasions. Dr. Michael Hartman, a neurologist at Emory Eastside Medical Center, routinely removes patients from machines that support organ function after he declares brain death. Hartman said the physicians have to make the tough decisions when families can't. "If you let them take control, they will never let go," Hartman said. "I realize this lack of control families must feel when we go in, but it's part of the job." Hawkins' lawyer, Crongeyer, says that stance is "kind of a scary [thing]." * * *

  • Scientific American:

    • "When to let go? Medicine's top dilemma", by Tom Heneghan (07/16/07
    • Excerpt: "End-of-life issues top the list of ethical dilemmas hospitals face as medical progress enables doctors to extend an endangered life to the hard-to-determine point where they may actually only be dragging out death.* * * These patients used to just die naturally, but now it might be doctors, hospital ethics committees or courts that decide if and when to let them. The more science discovers, especially about the brain, the harder it can get to make that decision. * * *

  • Society for Medical Decision Making:

    • Mission:"[T]o improve health outcomes through the advancement of proactive systematic approaches to clinical decision making and policy-formation in health care by providing a scholarly forum that connects and educates researchers, providers, policy-makers, and the public."
    • Resources: See its Resource Links page here.

  • Swift, Cynthia, The Whisper:

    • Published by Infinity Publishing, 54 pages (11/17/06).
    • Synopsis: "The Whisper brings a well-rounded approach to understanding the natural process of dying. By teaching and sharing experiences in a simple way, readers are better able to embrace this last stage of life. Swift has been a nurse for twenty-six years. She has worked in all areas of nursing from O.B., family practice and trauma to residential hospice. With years of long term care experience, she has been an invited speaker for Health Care Association of Michigan on End of Life Issues and Palliative Care in nursing for health professionals."

  • University of North Carolina's Working Group on Risk, Communication & Health Care Decision Making:

    • Mission: To promote research on issues of risk communication, patient-provider communication, and shared decision making in health care settings.