End of Life Decision Making

End-of-life decision-making is an increasing pervasive topic that has personal, political, legal, and, of course, medical implications. George Lundberg, MD said that “every American deserves the right to choose to have a death with dignity and as pain-free as medical science and practice can provide. To achieve that, patients and physicians must discuss the options for managing an upcoming death.” Atul Gawande, MD wrote in Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?, “But rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do. They can give toxic drugs of unknown efficacy, operate to try to remove part of the tumor, put in a feeding tube if a person can’t eat: there’s always something. We want these choices. We don’t want anyone—certainly not bureaucrats or the marketplace—to limit them. But that doesn’t mean we are eager to make the choices ourselves. Instead, most often, we make no choice at all. We fall back on the default, and the default is: Do Something. Is there any way out of this?” Gawande told about La Crosse, Wisconsin, where, by 1996, 85% of residents who died had written advanced directives.

La Crosse is the exception. Rational, informed decision-making is difficult; most people don’t know much about advance directives and don’t have good resources to learn about the many facets of end-of-life decision-making. Enter Mardi Coleman, a Master of Science candidate in Health Communication at Tufts University School of Medicine. With a background in geriatric mental health and an interest in how healthcare can meet the Institute of Medicine’s aims for a system that is efficient, equitable, effective, timely, patient-centered, and safe, she designed a end-of-life decision-making website in Online Consumer Health. The overarching goal of the website, as described in her final paper, is “to provide information that allows users to make informed end of life legal, medical treatment, and service decisions,” specifically to:

Help users clarify their understanding of their beliefs and values regarding end of life, treatments, and services, including that beliefs and values are situational and change over time.

Provide the types of information users need or want regarding advance directives, life-sustaining treatments, and services that extend or support the end of life in order to make informed decisions.

Engage first-time users and invite reuse because the website is attractive, well laid-out, and easy to use, and contains information that is relevant across many stages of decision-making.