"Slow Medicine" - A Growing Health Care Approach

For the Elderly, Being Heard About Life’s End
By JANE GROSS
May 5, 2008

Excerpt:
Grounded in research at the Dartmouth Medical School, slow medicine encourages physicians to put on the brakes when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly, and it educates patients and families how to push back against emergency room trips and hospitalizations designed for those with treatable illnesses, not the inevitable erosion of advanced age.

Slow medicine, which shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure, is increasingly available in nursing homes, but for those living at home or in assisted living, a medical scare usually prompts a call to 911, with little opportunity to choose otherwise.
At the end of her husband’s life, Ms. Gieg was spared these extreme options because she lives in Kendal at Hanover, a retirement community affiliated with Dartmouth Medical School that has become a laboratory for the slow medicine movement. At Kendal, it is possible — even routine — for residents to say “No” to hospitalization, tests, surgery, medication or nutrition.
the rest

[However, where is the line drawn before it becomes euthanasia?-PD]