Cultural Issues in End-Of-Life Decision Making

"Cultural Issues in End-of-Life Decision Making creates an engrossing tension as chapters on philosophical topics are interwoven with clinically-oriented ones including case examples that ground the reader in the reality of most human decisions. I highly recommend this book to researchers, health care providers, clergy, and other practitioners dealing with end-of-life issues." ---Catherine Hagan Hennessy, Health Care and Aging Studies Branch, Center for Disease Control and Prevention

End-of-life decision making is one of the most difficult but crucial challenges faced by patients and their families. In most cases, resources or counselors providing guidance in these decisions are not available. This book is intended to prepare nurses, physicians, and other health care workers to fill this role, insofar as they are most frequently in contact with the patient and his/her family and significant others at the time choices must be made. In this informative, practical book, Braun, Pietsch, and Blanchette first review the medical, legal, and ethical context of the dying experience, discussing ethnic perspectives and religious issues. For example, providing cultural and spiritually sensitive care requires that nurses, physicians, social work and others know and understand the implications of family members beliefs about life and death, supportive rituals and other activities. This book does a creditable job of presenting the issues and a broad overview of culture and common religions in America.

About the Editors:

Kathryn L. Braun, Dr.P.H., is Director of the University of Hawaii Center on Aging and an Associate Professor at the University of Hawaii School of Public Health. She is a Fellow in the Gerontological Society of American and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. James H. Pietsch, J.D., is Director of the University of Hawaii Elder Law Program (UHELP), an Associate Professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law, and a Clinical Adjunct Professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine. In 1990, he was the recipient of the Fifth Annual Paul Lichterman Memorial Award for contributions to the advancement of Law and Aging.

Patricia L. Blanchette, M.D., M.P.H., is a Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the John A. Burns School of Medicine and School of Public Health at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Blanchette is the Director of the Medical School′s cross-departmental Geriatric Medicine Program, and Geriatric Medicine Fellowship Program, the Pacific Islands Geriatric Education Center of Excellence in Geriatric Medicine. Dr. Blanchette has won numerous awards and honors, including an Excellence in Teaching Award, Distinguished Alumni, Best Doctors in America, and the Soroptimist′s Women of Distinction Award.

Dr. Kathryn L. Braun is Professor and Chair of the DrPH Program in the Department of Public Health Sciences. She has a joint appointment with the School of Social Work, where she serves as Co-Investigator of the National Resource Center for Native Hawaiian Elders. She is affiliated with the UH Center on Aging, through which she serves as evaluator for the Hawai‘i Healthy Aging Partnership, dedicated to building capacity to deliver evidence-based health promotion programs for older adults. She also is Research Director of ‘Imi Hale -- Native Hawaiian Cancer Network, which is funded through a grant to Papa Ola Lo¯kahi (a Native Hawaiian Health organization) from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In this role, she mentors Native Hawaiians who want to expand their skills in research, grant writing, and publishing. Dr. Braun’s primary teaching responsibilities are in the doctoral program, teaching seminars on health disparities and evidence-based public health. She is known for her work in community-based participatory research in cancer and gerontology, and she has published more than 125 peer-reviewed journal articles on these topics. She is a fellow in the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. She also consults as a trainer and program evaluator in Hawai‘i. Dr. Braun is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, having served in the Philippines (Bontoc) in the 1970s. In 2008, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Busan, Korea. She is the 2009-2011 President of the Active Aging Consortium Asia Pacific, an international network of gerontologists in Japan, Korea, China, Indonesia, Mongolia, Singapore, and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. She likes to travel and has visited all 7 continents and more than 110 countries.

James H. Pietsch joined the law school after first having served on active duty in the US Army Medical Service Corps and the Judge Advocate General’s Corps and subsequently serving as the directing attorney of the Honolulu Elder Law Unit of the Legal Aid Society of Hawai′i. At the law school he teaches Law, Aging and Medicine, Elder Law Clinic, Advanced Elder Law Clinic, and Health Law: Bioethics. He also holds a joint appointment at the John A. Burns School of Medicine where he specializes in issues at the intersection of law, aging, medicine, bioethics and psychiatry. Professor Pietsch serves as the law school Pro Bono faculty advisor, and supervises the University of Hawai′i Elder Law Program (UHELP). UHELP provides year-round direct legal services at the law school to socially and economically needy older persons. Professor Pietsch is a recipient of the Paul Lichterman Award for outstanding achievement in the advancement of legal services for older persons. In 2007 Professor Pietsch volunteered to serve as a Special Advisor to the Law and Order Task Force of the Multi-National Force-Iraq and subsequently served as a Rule of Law Advisor to the U.S. Embassy Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team and Kurdistan Regional Reconstruction Team in Iraq. More recently he served as a consultant for a US Pacific Command Rule of Law project in Timor Leste and a USAID-sponsored Access to Justice project back in Iraq. His Rule of Law work continues in Hawai′i as the faculty adviser to the law school’s Hammurabi Legal Forum.