Leaders in the care of patients who face serious and life-limiting illness have designated November as National Hospice and Palliative Care Month, pro...
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 08.09.2011
It is well documented that although advance directives are offered and included in the medical chart -- as the law requires -- in the end they are usually ignored.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 06.04.2011
An increasingly conservative hierarchy is flexing its muscle and leaving hospitals with a stark choice: buckle under pressure from Catholic authority or break the shackles of Vatican oversight.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 05.25.2011
A new bill instructs physicians to discuss a prognosis with seriously ill patients and ask if they would like information on hospice, palliative care and appropriate end-of-life options.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 11.17.2011
Let's be clear. Our movement for end-of-life choice does not condone assisted suicide, and it never has.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 05.25.2011
Today family, friends and neighbors who loved Joan and Thomas Vanacore are grieving their tragic deaths and wondering how it might have been different...
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 11.17.2011
I have written how recent changes to Ethical and Religious Directive (ERD) Number 58 compel Catholic hospitals and nursing homes to either disregard y...
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 05.25.2011
Ruth Proskauer Smith, a friend and an activist for individual autonomy, died last night, closing her life in the manner she had wished for, planned fo...
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 11.17.2011
Patients who had talked with their doctors experienced a more peaceful, pain-free end of life than those tethered to the tubes and machines meant to extend their lives.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 05.25.2011
This ill-conceived rule will surely obstruct and delay good care in many instances, increasing the suffering of dying patients and their loved ones.
Barbara Coombs Lee | Posted 01.16.2012