Advance Care Planning / End of Life

It’s no surprise, yet it needs to be reiterated, that another major public survey has found that conversations, and documentation, around medical care at the end of life fall short of the mark for most people. A new survey out from the Kaiser Family Foundation underscores that many people have…

Is your family one that loves to play board games? Looking for a new one for that next family gathering? Well, say hello to Hello, a new game available for purchase from Common Practice, meant to stimulate conversations around living, dying and what matters most in life. Viewed as a method to…

Thinking about care options and anxieties as you deal with a late stage illness can be very hard. Talking with loved ones may just heighten the emotional tenor of such conversations. Sometimes it may make sense to speak with someone a bit removed- and sometimes that someone may not even…

As was noted in last week’s agebuzz, the drive to encourage people to fill out advance directives has had limited success. Sitting down to contemplate medical care choices for the end of your life, and then writing down explicit instructions, is clearly too high a hurdle for many people. But…

Everyone knows you should, yet so many of you haven’t- haven’t filled out an advance directive, that is. Talking with your loved ones, conferring with your doctors and figuring out what treatments or plans you want in place for the end of your life is essential: for you, for your…

Perhaps this is a taboo topic, but to anyone concerned about the environment, it’s important to understand how current funeral practices are resource wasteful and even toxic to the environment. And in response, there is now a growing ecologically-driven death care industry that looks to create new funeral rituals for…