73% of Americans would prefer to die at home; in Massachusetts only about 20% do. We can do better. The first thing we need to do is start talking.
Engage With Grace: The One Slide Project was designed with one goal; to help start the conversation about end of life expectations. The idea is simple. Create a tool to get people talking. One Slide, with just five questions, to help us talk with each other and our loved ones about our preferences.
We’re asking you to share this One Slide wherever and whenever you can: at a presentation, at dinner, at your book club. Let’s start a global discussion that, until now, most of us haven’t had. Commit to being able to answer these five questions about end of life experience for yourself and for your loved ones. Then commit to helping others do the same.
Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team
Request: If you plan to try to answer these questions with family members during the Thanksgiving holiday, and wouln’t mind having a reporter listen in and record part of the conversation, please send an email to Martha Bebinger (marthab@bu.edu). Thanks.
Thanks to all who have worked to spread this message today.
As a health care lawyer, my occupational disability is seeking to ensure that conversations started through the one slide actually end up with properly documented health care directives that are entered into medical records and discussed in advance with physicians and caregivers.
See my Engage With Grace post, with links to health care proxy and living will forms for all states, at:
http://healthblawg.typepad.com/healthblawg/2008/11/engage-with-grace.html
Thanks for sharing this. My dad is 74 and in an assisted living facility. We have not had this discussion and it needs to be done. I think I will wait to “review” this with him until next week. Let the excitement of Thanksgiving draw to a close and then pop it to him.
It’s amazing how few of us take the time to share things like this with the ones we love.
Jason
http://www.jrsmedical.com
Hi Jason – I hope the conversation with your dad goes well. My sister has ALS and it took us about 10 years to get through the conversation and all the decisions that it triggers. We knew, for example, for a long time that she did not want to live once she could no longer breathe on her own. But she never quite got around to signing a Do Not Resuscitate order. Once she qualified for hospice, they took care of the DNR in a very matter of fact, taking care of business kind of way. It would be nice if the end of life discussion was part of a routine medical conversation more often. Even now, we’re not sure that my sister’s desire to stay off a ventilator will be respected if the document isn’t on hand when or if she has an emergency. It is very hard to plan for all the possibilities.
Good Luck to you, Martha Bebinger
Please see a special thank-you here: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2008/11/thanks-for-engaging-gracefully.html