Product Description

Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Artificial Feeding, Comfort Care and the Patient with a Life-Threatening Illness, Fifth Edition is a guide to help patients and families with end-of-life decisions. Millions of people have been helped and comforted by the common sense and practical advice found in these pages.

Hank Dunn draws on his extensive experience as a chaplain in a nursing home, hospice program and hospital. In Hard Choices he shares stories of many of the patients and families he has help guide through this most difficult and important time in their lives. He also has conducted a thorough search of the medical literature citing almost 150 journal articles of research into the topics discussed in the book.

In the very first pages the reader is encouraged to first consider the goals of medical care. What is the appropriate medical goal for this patient at this phase of life? Is it to (1) cure, (2) stabilize functioning or to (3) prepare for a comfortable and dignified death?

The first chapter deals with CPR, resuscitation attempts. Research has shown that this treatment offers little if any medical benefit to patients who have more that one or two medical problems, who cannot live independently or those who are in the final stages of a terminal disease. Chaplain Dunn is convinced that patients in those conditions or their families choose ineffective resuscitation attempts for emotional and spiritual reasons, not because the treatment offers hope of saving the life.

The second chapter addresses the issues surrounding artificial feeding tubes. Receiving nutrition and hydration through a tube helps many patients who have lost the ability to swallow. Some of these patients live otherwise normal lives except for receiving food and water through a tube. But for some people the treatment offers little if any benefit. There is a growing body of research that clearly shows that an artificial feeding tube for an advanced dementia patient (like Alzheimer s) has no medical benefit and can actually harm the patient. Dunn also reviews the evidence supporting the fact that dying without artificial hydration is the compassionate, natural and peaceful way to leave this world.

Hospice, respirators, dialysis, antibiotics, hospitalization and pain control are other medical treatments covered in Hard Choices for Loving People. In several places throughout the book special attention is given to making these decisions for children and for people with dementia.

The concluding pages of the book address the emotional and spiritual concerns at the end of life. People of any faith or of no faith tradition have found these words helpful. Chaplain Dunn feels the journey at the final stages of life is a journey to letting go and letting be.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #734359 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 76 pages

About the Author
For 24 years Hank has been ministering to patients at the end of their lives and their families. He has served both at a hospice chaplain and a nursing home chaplain.

Hank is a graduate of the University of Florida with a degree in history and was on football scholarship. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

After serving for five years right after seminary in a very traditional church in Macon, Georgia he moved to the Washington, DC area to be a part of the very nontraditional Church of the Saviour. There he was a member of the World Peacemakers mission group. For a year following the move to DC, Hank worked as a carpenter and then for four years directed an inner-city ministry for hard-to-employ people. In 1983 Chaplain Dunn began his healthcare work as a nursing home chaplain.

He is a past president of the Northern Virginia Chapter of the Alzheimer's Association. He has served on the Ethics Committees at Fairfax Nursing Center and the Reston Hospital Center and the Chaplaincy Advisory Board at the Loudoun Hospital Center. He continues to volunteer as a chaplain at Loudoun Hospital and at Joseph's House, a home for formerly homeless men with AIDS in Washington, DC. Hank is a frequent speaker nationally on the topic of making end-of-life decisions and spirituality and healthcare. To help him explain end-of-life decisions to patients and families, he wrote a booklet to hand to them so they could reflect on the issues discussed. As an afterthought, he sent the book out to other institutions to see if they would be interested in purchasing it for their clients. First published in 1990, "Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Artificial Feeding, Comfort Care, and the Patient with a Life-Threatening Illness" is now in its Fourth Edition, with over 2 million copies sold, and it is being used in more than 5,000 hospitals, nursing homes, faith communities and hospice programs nationwide. The second edition of his second booklet, "Light in the Shadows: Meditations While Living with a Life-Threatening Illness," was released in 2005. This is a collection of reflections on the emotional and spiritual concerns at the end of life.

He enjoys backpacking, biking, hiking, kayaking, fishing and life in general.

Customer Reviews

Superb - plus also available free
I am a health care lawyer sometimes tasked with helping people face difficult end of life issues. This is the most sensitive and lovingly realsitic book of its kind that I've seen -- and there are many other good ones out there. Pssst -- you also can get it through a free pdf download at www.hardchoices.com . The booklet is prettier, but whatever the format, it's a vital read. I've always recommended it to clients, but my own family used it to open up hearts and minds -- and settle an ugly dispute between my mother and one of her brothers -- when my grandfather was dying of Alzheimer's. Hank Dunn's work is a God send.

A good companion for some of the hardest choices in life...
For those who are wrestling with difficult choices regarding the end of life care of a loved one, this should be required reading. I suspect that no other book is given out or recommended by hospices more than this one is. It is short, gentle and compassionate, but honest and straightforward. ...

Help your parents dye with dignity
This book is very helpful, wize and touching as to how to care for your elderly parents. It follows Hospice guidelines, which are to alow people to dye with dignity, painfree, and to follow wishes, when possible. This book is advisable for everyone who may ever need to make decisions for those who reach the end of their natural life.