Advance Directives, End-of-Life Care, and Euthanasia Vocabulary

Flashcards covering key terms, legal documents, ethical definitions, euthanasia classifications, and media cases related to advance directives and end-of-life medical decisions.

Advance Directives

An outline of specific wishes about the medical care to be given in the event that the individual loses the ability to make or communicate decisions.

Living Will

A document that presents decisions made ahead of time regarding an individual's own end-of-life health care; it is easy to get, does not require a lawyer, and carries legal weight.

Durable Power of Attorney

A legal authorization allowing a competent person to appoint another person to make health care decisions when the original person becomes incompetent.

Healthcare Proxy

Someone chosen to make healthcare decisions on another person's behalf, serving as a surrogate decision-maker.

Power of Attorney - financial

A legal designation naming the specific person who can make financial decisions for an individual.

Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare (DPAHC)

An arrangement where a designated living person can make real-time healthcare decisions as clinical situations change, rather than relying solely on a written document.

Code Blue / Medical Emergency

An emergency announcement calling for cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts.

DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)

A written order placed in the medical chart (often indicated with a blue band) to avoid cardiopulmonary resuscitation efforts such as chest compressions, defibrillation, or drug stimulation.

DNI

An abbreviation for 'do not intubate', indicated on blue bands along with 'no code' status.

Ethics Committee

A hospital body that educates employees and constituencies, develops policies regarding death and dying, and acts as an advisory consultant to providers and families.

Euthanasia

A term derived from Greek meaning 'good death', which in English refers to an easy death or the painless inducement of a quick death.

Active Euthanasia (Mercy Killing)

Actively assisting the process of death, which is illegal in most of the United States.

Involuntary Euthanasia

Actively assisting the process of death for an individual who has not requested assistance.

Voluntary Euthanasia

Actively assisting the process of death for someone who has requested assistance in the dying process.

Passive Euthanasia

Ceasing therapies that prolong life (such as withholding ventilators or feeding tubes) so that death can occur natively, effectively doing nothing to preserve life.

Palliative Care

Care designed not to cure, but to provide relief from pain and suffering so patients can live as well as possible for as long as possible.

Hospice Movement

Centers for providing palliative care for terminally ill patients that focus on the process of relieving pain and suffering.

Quality of Life

A concept encompassing essential traits that make life worth living.

Surrogate (Healthcare Proxy)

A person who substitutes for another, often in the decision-making process for healthcare.

Life

The entire state of the living thing.

Suicide

The act of knowingly ending one's own life.

Passive Suicide

The refusal of medical treatment by a person who knows that refusal will lead to death.

Active Suicide

Taking one's own life through a conscious act.

Physician Assisted Suicide

Involves a doctor knowingly and intentionally providing a person with the knowledge or means required to commit suicide, including counseling about lethal doses and prescribing or supplying such drugs.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian

A medical figure known as 'Dr. Death' who assisted in around 130 physician-assisted suicides and served 8 years of a 10-25 year conviction for Second Degree Murder.

Terri Schiavo Case

A legal case involving a 26-year-old woman who collapsed in 1990 and entered a vegetative state; her husband petitioned to remove her feeding tube, leading to 14 appeals before its final removal on March 18th, 2005.