Make medical decisions now, not later in an emergency

SALISBURY — Making medical decisions is never easy, but it is especially hard under the stressful conditions that occur at the end of life. To help ease that strain — and to ensure that everyone’s wishes are carried out — professionals encourage anyone over age 18 to have a discussion with their family about medical decisions.Noble Horizons will host a panel of experts Thursday, May 19, from 6 to 8 p.m. to open a conversation about end-of-life care.“Our mission is to help people understand the different choices they have and to understand that it’s preferable to make those choices when their minds are clear,” said Donna DiMartino, a certified hospice and palliative care nurse with Hospice Volunteers of Northwest Connecticut.The panel will include an emergency room physician, an internal medicine physician, a representative from the Medicare hospice program and a member of the clergy. The organizers of the event are DiMartino and Barbara Maltby, who is the medical ethicist at Sharon Hospital and serves on the ethics committee at Sharon Hospital. She said the idea for the panel came out of that committee.“Many of the problems that come up to the committee involve end-of-life issues,” Maltby said. “This confirms a study I did at the University of Chicago. There, the majority, probably 80 percent, of issues were end-of-life cases. Of those, 50 percent involved communication issues.”Maltby said the committee’s idea is to involve the community in a dialogue will help to resolve some of those communication problems.“Communication is necessary to provide people with the information they need to make the best decisions at the end of life for themselves,” she said. And those decisions should begin way ahead of the end-of-life crisis. It should begin with having an advance directive, for example, she said, which is a health care proxy and a living will. DiMartino and Maltby both stressed that living wills are not just for those facing a terminal diagnosis. DiMartino said everyone over the age of 18 should have a living will.“The reality is that all of us need a living will. I could walk out the door and get hit by a car. In an emergency situation, it’s always a decision under panicky circumstances. How much better to have those conversations when you can be thoughtful and have a discussion.”As part of her job at Sharon Hospital, Maltby helps community members write their own living wills. “It’s a free service for anybody who uses the hospital for any reason,” she said. “Even if they’ve never been to the hospital and they’re young, they should still come and do this. Everybody over 18 should have these documents. You can always revise them.”The panel discussion May 18 is meant to be the beginning of a conversation. Maltby and DiMartino emphasized that the event will be a dialogue, not a lecture.“You have the experts in front of you. Ask questions,” DiMartino said.For more information, contact Maltby at 860-364-4250.