Faith Communities and Advance Care Planning

Religion and Dying: How to Address Advance Care Planning in Your Faith Community

Guest Column: Rev. Tarris Rosell, Ph.D., D.Min.,

Rosemary Flanigan Chair, Center for Practical Bioethics

August 22, 2012

Religions differ on many matters of fact and faith; but most all of them teach compassion, the virtue of comforting the afflicted, and accepting the inevitability of physical death. No religion of which I’m aware condones torture — which is how futile medical treatments often are described by healthcare providers who feel forced to do things to patients that won’t help and might harm.

Religion and Choosing to End Medical Care

Deeply Religious Parents Often Reluctant to Cease Medical Care

Liz Neporent

ABC News

August 14, 2012

When a child is seriously ill or injured, parents understandably move heaven and earth to save them. However, a new study has found that sometimes deeply religious families test the limits of medical science by asking doctors to go to extremes to prolong life.

Links:

• Religion. Healthcare Policy. Do the Twain Meet?, Rosemary Flanigan, June 24, 2009
• Religion and Medicine: Compatible?, Farr Curlin, MD and John Lantos, MD, May 14, 2009

Making the Moral Case for Health Reform

Art Caplan, PhD

Virtual Town Hall Meeting on Health Reform

This month the Center for Practical Bioethics is conducting a Virtual Town Hall Meeting on The Future of Health Reform. 

It launched last week with comments from Art Caplan, PhD, who argues the Obama administration has yet to make the moral case for health reform. For more information click here.

Link to Poll Question: Has the moral case been made for health reform?

Links to Podcast:

• You Tube
• Audio

TPOPP Moving Ahead

TPOPP is an acronym for Transportable Physician Orders for Patient Preferences. The Center for Practical Bioethics is working with a number of institutions to incorporate this program for their patients.

This article in the St. Louis Beacon provides an overview.

Group wants elderly to talk about end-of-life medical care while still healthy

Robert Joiner

St. Louis Beacon

August 7, 2012

Kansas City area providers are putting into practice what they have learned about the forms and end-of-life conversations with the elderly. The Center for Practical Bioethics will later do an evaluation to determine whether the medical service, ranging from all to none, mirrored the wishes that the patients expressed on the end-of-life form.

Training a New Generation of Researchers

Kelstan Lynch Ellis

Aaron Heller

 

One goal of Frontiers: The Heartland Institute for Translational Research, is to train a new generation of clinical and translational researchers.  

This edition of The Frontiers Podcast features two medical students who have taken a year out of their clinical training to study clinical and translational research. For more information about Frontiers visit www.frontiersresearch.org.

July's Top Ten: The Bioethics Channel

The Bioethics Channel podcast generated 3,556 downloads during the month of July. Since launching the program in February 2009, various editions of the program have been downloaded 133,255 times. 

If you're interested in having a particular guest or topic on the program, please let us know by emailing me at llaboube@practicalbioethics.org. 

Happy listening!

Lorell LaBoube
Director of Communications
Center for Practical Bioethics


July's Top Ten: The Bioethics Channel

1. Bioethics: The Next Generation, Emily Abdoler, Brett Kaylor, Daniel Vogelsang
2. Removing Kidneys Before Death, Tarris Rosell, PhD
3. Autonomy Run Amok? Mary Crowley
4. Just the Beginning: The Supreme Court and Ethical Healthcare Reform, John Carney, Myra Christopher, Tarris Rosell
5. REMS and Pain, Lynn Webster, MD
6. Health Reform: An Ethical Analysis, Rosemary Flanigan, John Carney, Tarris Rosell
7. Why do people still suffer at the end of life? Myra Christopher
8. End of Life Scare II, John Carney
9. Celebrating with Frontliners, Karren King Crouch, Helen Emmott, Jane Rues, and Dianne Shumaker         
10. Balancing Faith and Politics, John Danforth