New Web site offers living will help
HARLINGEN - Dealing with medical emergencies and the death of a loved one is seldom easy, but Craig Klugman of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio is making it simpler for people to make important health care decisions now.
Klugman, assistant director at the UTHSC Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics, created a Web site, www.TexasLivingWill.org, that provides advance directive forms - often known as a living will - and step-by-step instructions to fill them out. The Web site is bilingual.
"As a clinical ethicist, I have encountered many families with relatives who are in the hospital in persistent vegetative states or at the end of their lives and the families have no idea what decisions to make," Klugman said in a news release.
"Our goal is to help people give a gift that enables families to know what loved ones would have wanted and to take away any guilt about making a wrong decision."
Dr. James Castillo, faculty member at the Regional Health Academic Center and medical director for Odyssey Hospice and hospitalist director at Valley Baptist Medical Center, says the right time for people to think about these decisions is when they are in good health. He often has seen Rio Grande Valley families who have not discussed such matters.
"It's always the right time to do (this paperwork). The only wrong time to do it is when it's too late," Castillo said. "Those kinds of documents empower the patient and relieve their loved ones of that burden."
Advance directive documents also help doctors because it lets them know what the patient would want.
Castillo said it is important to clarify that such documents are used only when patients cannot speak for themselves.
From the Web site, people will be able to fill out and print forms in either Spanish or English.
www.TexasLivingWill.org
