
16 ACPE Credits
CLE Credit may be available.
16.0 Contact Hours
Course Fees:
$995 for Physicians, Attorneys, Psychologists, Pharmacists, & Dentists$750 for Physician Assistants
$750 for Nurse Practitioners
$595 for Nurses, Students & Others
BIAS FREE CME - No Commercial Support was provided for this CME activity.
Target Audience
Program Purpose
Topics:
- End of Life Care and Refusal of Treatment
- Discuss ethically and legally appropriate end-of-life treatment choices with patients.
- Explain the lines the law draws between appropriate and inappropriate end-of-life treatment choices for patients.
- Dying and the Patient With Decisionmaking Capacity
- Explain the term "advance directive" and the purposes of advance directives.
- Differentiate between instructional and proxy advance directives.
- Explain the difference between advance directives and physicians&apost; orders regarding end-of-life treatment options.
- Identify the gaps that arise between advance directives and orders in patient charts.
- Assess the utility of POLST as a way to fill in those gaps.
- When the Patient Lacks Decisionmaking Capacity (With or Without An Advance Directive)
- Explain state laws that permit family members or others acting on behalf of patients lacking capacity to speak on their behalf.
- Analyze decisionmaking approaches under the three possibly applicable legal standards: substituted judgment, best interests, and the legally disfavored subjective test.
- Palliative Care and Hospice
- Explain the difference between palliative care and hospice.
- Explain Medicare requirements for the coverage of hospice care.
- Evaluate suggestions of hospice care made by other members of the care team or by hospice providers themselves.
- Death by Neurological Criteria
- Explain legal recognition of death by neurological criteria.
- Differentiate between issues involving patients satisfying that criteria and patients who do not, under the law.
- Explain the multiple types of objections patients' families are raising to diagnoses of brain death.
- Futility: When Family Members Want It All
- Explain the concept of medical futility.
- Distinguish between quantitative and qualitative futility.
- Compare state laws specifically describing procedures to be followed when clinicians view a patients treatment as futile with state laws that are less procedurally specific.
- Beyond Withholding and Withdrawing
- Differentiate between aid in dying and euthanasia.
- Explain the statutory requirements in the states imposing strict procedures and reporting requirements regarding medical aid in dying.
- Evaluate the practice of medical aid in dying as it proceeds pursuant to clinical practice guidelines.
- Case Discussions and Debriefing
- Apply what was learned about patient capacity, brain death, and withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatment.
- Relate principles to case scenarios.
- Evaluate the relevance of principles discussed to attendees own practice