Is your Facility Prepared for Advance Directives for Stopping Eating and Drinking?
At the March 2019 annual AMDA meeting, Dr. Karl Steinberg (our incoming AMDA VP) and I were part of a panel debating whether the United States should adopt the Dutch policy of legalizing Advance Directives for Euthanasia. In 2014, 4.4% of deaths in the Netherlands were by euthanasia and 20% were by palliative sedation. Dr. Cees Hertogh, a Dutch physician and bioethicist, gave a wonderful presentation on the history of euthanasia in the Netherlands and the criteria for euthanasia, which have been modified to include euthanasia by advance directive (AD) for persons with dementia. In contrast, the 20-year experience of Oregon with the Death with Dignity Act (reported in the September 2017 Annals of Internal Medicine) had 0.2% of their deaths via medical aid in dying. California has had a similar frequency who died by lethal ingestion via the End of Life Option Act.