Ohio End of Life Options hosted an exhibit table for the second year in a row at the family physician’s annual conference in Columbus last weekend. Dr. Diana Spade (see photo below) shared her experiences. She has been a volunteer to both patients and doctors who participated in Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act while living in Oregon. She recently moved to Columbus, Ohio and has been helping to answer questions about Oregon’s law.
Vikki Miller and her father Don Richardson were also there to share with doctors how her mother asked them to advocate for a law in Ohio after she died recently in Cincinnati. She had hospice care but also wanted the option of aid in dying
Doctors talked with members of Ohio End of Life Options and left with a Fact Sheet (see below) with information about the safeguards included in the laws in eight different states and Washington DC. Even though Ohio does not yet have a law, doctors should be informed of the laws if they are asked. Many of the family doctors said that they talk regularly with their patients about advance care planning.
Aid in dying legislation would add an option, in addition to hospice care, that provides peace to the terminally ill. Ohio End of Life Options works at educating medical professionals, and other professions, in the Buckeye State about the basics and benefits of death with dignity as an end-of-life option.
(click in the bottom of the Fact Sheet below to pop up a navigation bar that lets you page between the first and second pages.)
[pdf-embedder url=”https://ohiooptions.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/OAFP-Physician-Fact-Sheet-Aug-19.pdf” title=”OAFP – Physician Fact Sheet Aug 19″]