Contributing

Is Compassion and Choices a legitimate organization?

Is Compassion and Choices a legitimate organization?

Compassion & Choices, a national nonprofit organization committed to improving care and expanding options for the end of life, has earned a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, America’s largest independent charity navigator, for the 8th straight year.

What does Compassion and Choices do?

Compassion & Choices is the nation’s oldest, largest and most active nonprofit working to improve care, expand options and empower everyone to chart their end-of-life journey.

Is Compassion and Choices a non profit?

Compassion & Choices improves care, expands options and empowers everyone to chart their end-of-life journey. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Defend existing end-of-life options from efforts to restrict access.

What are your choices at the end-of-life?

Hospice and palliative care focus on quality of life rather than length of life, with the goal of comfort. Voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, also known as VSED, involves declining food, liquids and artificial feeding in order to shorten the dying process.

How can you help a dying patient?

Speak calmly and be reassuring. Hold hands or use a gentle touch if it’s comforting. Remind the person where he or she is and who is there. Ask the medical team for help if significant agitation occurs.

Who is eligible for medical assistance in dying?

These criteria included the presence of a serious and incurable medical condition, an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability, enduring and intolerable physical or psychological suffering, and a reasonably foreseeable natural death [2].

What is compassion and empathy?

While empathy refers more generally to our ability to take the perspective of and feel the emotions of another person, compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help.

What is medical aid in dying?

Medical aid in dying is the practice of a physician providing a competent, terminally ill patient—at the patient’s request—with a prescription for a lethal dose of medication that the patient intends to use to end his or her own life.

What is the injection given at end of life?

Morphine and other medications in the morphine family, such as hydromorphone, codeine and fentanyl, are called opioids. These medications may be used to control pain or shortness of breath throughout an illness or at the end of life.