Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge - Softcover

Quill M.D., Timothy E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393311406 ISBN 13: 9780393311402

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994

Synopsis

"For me Dr. Quill is a hero―a physician with a head and a heart." ―Betty Rollin, author of Last Wish

This book looks squarely at how patients can make crucial decisions and take charge of the end of their lives. This book is a resource for anyone who fears unnecessary suffering and excessive medical intervention at that point. It helps readers think through and then complete advance directives, and also to take a more active role when they or a family member becomes terminally ill. Through real-life stories and his own experience, Dr. Quill explores what measures a patient can choose to prolong life and how to forgo such measures if they begin to extend a painful death, choosing instead approaches such as comfort care which emphasize quality more than quantity of life. Finally, Dr. Quill speaks out on physician-assisted suicide and why he helped a long-term patient of his, stricken with leukemia, to take her life when her suffering became intolerable. He asks for regulation, rather than denial, knowing that many patients and doctors ofen face this question at times of crisis.

About this title

About the Author:

Timothy E. Quill, M.D. is associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A persuasive argument for giving the severely ill, and those facing a lingering death, options about levels of care, as well as the right to a dignified death. Former hospice-director Quill (Medicine and Psychiatry/University of Rochester) made headlines in 1991 with an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (reprinted here) describing how he assisted a terminally ill woman to commit suicide. Stories of other patients' dire experiences reinforce Quill's contention that medicine's traditional focus on fighting death to the end must be balanced by a humane philosophy of ``comfort care'' that concentrates on relieving suffering and improving the quality of life--even at the risk of shortening it. Comfort care, the author says, offers the terminally ill the chance to live their remaining time with less pain and more peace of mind, as well as the possibility of dying with more dignity, control, and support. Quill argues that the question of physician-assisted suicide should be examined anew, and he proposes some clinical guidelines to stimulate discussion. Unlike Derek Humphry (Final Exit, 1992) or Jack Kevorkian (Prescription: Medicine, 1991), Quill operates in the mainstream, urging cautious exploration and carefully considered changes in public policy. Meanwhile, he urges readers to prepare advance directives to guide their own medical treatment in the event of loss of mental capacity, and he includes samples of a living will and a health-care proxy statement, along with instructions on their use. In a final chapter, Quill sets specific tasks for potential patients (meaning all of us), physicians, institutions, and policy-makers concerned with modifying society's response to the life-and-death issues he has raised. A thoughtful, well-documented addition to the often high- pitched debates on this emotional subject. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0393311406
• ISBN 13: 9780393311402
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256