Log on to the website of "Choice and Dignity" and fill in the "living will" voluntarily, and modify or cancel it at any time
In June p>211, Mr. Li, who works in Henan public security system, received an alternative email-his good friend Heping (a pseudonym) sent him a "living will".
Generally speaking, once his sudden accident is diagnosed as incurable and he loses his self-consciousness, he entrusts Mr. Li to finish this text for himself, persuading and asking his family and doctors to give up all painful medical rescue measures and let him die naturally with dignity.
Heping worked in a foreign company and was busy in Beijing and Henan all the year round. The living testament was made in triplicate, and the other two copies were kept in the car toolbox and the office respectively. It has Heping's signature and fingerprint, with its detailed home address and work unit and all contact information, which is 7 pages and 5 pieces of content. Obviously, this is a product after careful consideration.
this friendship entrustment beyond family ties makes Mr. Li "have a heavy heart and too much responsibility". He also began to think about his "that day" for the first time.
Mr. Li said that Heping's sister and Wei (a pseudonym) were head nurses in the ICU ward of a 3A hospital in Luoyang, and they also left a "living will" for their son who was studying in high school.
It is understood that the alternative approach of the He brothers and sisters stems from their empathy for the painful rescue of their father's dying lung cancer and their recognition of a public welfare website.
On June 16th, the signer of the living will was peaceful and obtained a copy of the "living will".
According to Heping, a group of volunteers composed of government workers, medical professionals and academics set up the first public welfare website advocating "death with dignity" in Beijing. The full name of the website is "Choice and Dignity", and its founders are Luo Yuping, the daughter of the late general Luo Ruiqing, and Chen Xiaolu, the son of Marshal Chen Yi. There are only 321 volunteers who have completed the "living will"
and have signed the "living will" text, most of whom are concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai.
in this "living will" provided by Heping, the "living will" is all called "my five wishes", which are "I want or don't want relevant medical services", "I want to use or not use life support therapy", "How do I want others to treat me", "What do I want my family and friends to know" and "Who do I want to help me". Under each "wish", there are 1~11 sub-items with a total of 42 items, which are filled in by ticking.
The general principle of this text is that if you are in an "irreversible coma", "persistent vegetative state" or "end of life" due to illness or injury, no matter what medical measures are used, the time of death will not exceed 6 months, and the role of all life support treatments is only to stop treatment when you prolong your life for a few days and have no quality of life.
From a peaceful point of view, it takes a long time to check any of the 42 options. It can really help your family understand what the patient can't express, and it can also help you calmly consider and arrange your funeral when you are healthy.
From June 1th, 213, citizens can log on to the website of "Choice and Dignity" and voluntarily fill in the "living will", which can be modified or revoked at any time. As of June 21st, the website had 1,294,934 visitors and 5,755 registered members. * * * A total of 321 people completed the "living will". Both registered members and volunteers who have signed the "living will" text are mostly concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai.
Luo Diandian, the person in charge of the website, introduced that the first folk text of "living will" was first launched in China, hoping to let more people know what "living will" and "death with dignity" are through "my five wishes", and how to realize personal wishes by establishing "living will", so that more people can know that choosing not to use life support system at the end of life is a choice to maintain dignity. Ling Feng, director of neurosurgery in xuanwu hospital, Beijing, is a famous neurosurgeon in China. He was famous at home and abroad for miraculously treating Liu Hairuo, the host of Phoenix TV. During the two sessions in 211, in order to promote death with dignity, Professor Ling Feng, a member of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, proposed to set up a "registration center for living wills" in China. "But death with dignity is not completely euthanized."
Professor Chen Ziping of Soochow University in Taiwan Province made a clear distinction between euthanasia and death with dignity. He said that euthanasia is to help patients end their lives peacefully by injecting drugs and other measures. It is a positive, active and cooperative "helping death" with the aim of ending the suffering of patients in the dying state. Death with dignity is a state of natural death, which refers to stopping the use of ventilators and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) for terminally ill patients or vegetarians who have no hope of recovery. The purpose is to alleviate the physical pain and make it in a peaceful state. death with dignity is passive and passive, which is the inaction of medical measures. In addition, the death date of euthanasia is clear, while death with dignity's death date is uncertain.
This way of natural death was confirmed as "death with dignity" by Luo Diandian.
The "living will" advocated by Luo Diandian suggests that people sign a document at the end of illness and life, when their health or consciousness is still clear, stating that once they are in the end of incurable illness or dying, they will give up using life-support treatments that only prolong the death process and have no quality, such as artificial respirator, cardiopulmonary resuscitation or feeding machine, and let life die naturally.
More and more people agree with "death with dignity"
Many people can accept their death with dignity, but it is difficult to implement death with dignity for their relatives.
Talking about death and dying is no longer taboo among urban residents with higher education. People who have witnessed the bad state of relatives and friends at the end of their lives can look at dying more positively and have a more positive attitude. Medical staff are more willing to talk about death than the average person.
Professor Dong Yuzheng, honorary chairman of Guangzhou Medical Ethics Association and tutor of postgraduate students majoring in medical ethics in Guangzhou Medical College, said that when he gave a special lecture on death with dignity in a public forum, he asked death with dignity to raise his hand. As a result, most people raised their hands, including young people and people over 7 years old. But when he asked if he agreed to give dignity to his relatives, not many people raised their hands. "Many people can accept their own death with dignity, but it is very difficult to implement death with dignity for their relatives."
Dong Yuzheng believes that the main obstacles to accepting "living wills" come from psychology and ideas. Pay attention to life and think that death is a normal process, which is neither accelerated nor delayed.
The advocacy of "living will" has also caused people in the industry to reflect on the principle of medical treatment.
Almost at the same time, the World Health Organization put forward three "palliative medical principles" that year: attaching importance to life and considering death as a normal process; Neither accelerating nor delaying death; Provide a way to relieve pain and discomfort. "This shows that the principle of treatment that does not involve active lethal behavior and brings maximum comfort to the seriously ill and dying is becoming a trend in the world."
At present, in China, Professor Zhai Zhenming from the Department of Philosophy of Sun Yat-sen University said that people are afraid to talk about "death" and advocating death with dignity will inevitably impact the traditional concept of "all the virtues's filial piety comes first". When we talk about "filial piety", we should be kind to our parents, and the important sign of being kind to our parents is to do things according to their will. Then, why does our traditional practice seem to be incompatible with the concept of "death with dignity"?
There are at least two possibilities: First, people's understanding of "being good to their parents" is too simplistic, and they think that prolonging their life is "good" to them; Secondly, the traditional system is hypocritical, which interprets healthy people as dying people based on their own considerations.
It is a kind of "pseudo-filial piety" to prolong the life span of a loved one, and the "dignity" of the deceased is likely to be distorted into "dignity" in the eyes of others or "face" of relatives. In China, "living will" is still a relatively frontier minority topic.