Caregiver Glossary: END OF LIFE ISSUES

Commonly used terms when talking about end-of-life matters

Advance directives: Legally accurate name for Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney.

CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation): Non-surgical massage of a heart which has stopped to try to get the organ working again. Procedure will almost always be started unless there is a D N R order.

Competent/competency: The ability of a person to communicate with a physician and understand the implications and consequences of medical procedures.

DNR (Do not resuscitate): An order on the patient's medical chart advising health professionals that extraordinary measures should not be used to attempt to save this person's life.

Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care: An advance directive by which a patent nominates another person to make health care decisions if and when the patient becomes incompetent, thus allowing a treating physician to obtain informed consent to a medical procedure or withdrawal of treatment.

Health Care Proxy: A combination of the above two documents and phrased differently. Likely to be encountered in the states of Massachusetts and New York.

Heroic Measures: Medical procedures which are pointless because the patient is certain to die regardless of these procedures.

Hospice: Hospice care focuses on the quality of life for people who are experiencing an advanced, life-limiting illness and their caregivers. Hospice provides pain management, symptom control, and family support.

Informed consent: A patient giving permission to a physician to carry out a medical procedure after the patient is made fully aware of the benefits, risks, and any alternatives.

Living Will: Popular name for an advance directive by which a person requests in writing a physician not to connect, or to disconnect, life-supporting equipment if this procedure is merely delaying an inevitable death. Legal in all U S states.

Negotiated death: A formal agreement between family, physicians, hospital management, etc, that life support systems to an incompetent person are better disconnected in the best interest of the patient. All parties agree not to bring lawsuits.

Palliative care:  Measures which do not attempt to treat the illness, but to relieve the pain and other discomfort accompanying it.

This information was provided by Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization