LIHUE — Dr. Robert Weiner understands the difficulties speaking about death, which is why he’s looking forward to helping people through “Talk with the Doc” at Kauai Hospice. “There certainly needs to be more conversations about end-of-life issues,” said the medical
LIHUE — Dr. Robert Weiner understands the difficulties speaking about death, which is why he’s looking forward to helping people through “Talk with the Doc” at Kauai Hospice.
“There certainly needs to be more conversations about end-of-life issues,” said the medical co-director for Kauai Hospice. “We felt people need a form to talk without necessarily talking about a specific person and about end-of-life issues.”
The sessions on the first Saturday of each month will allow people to speak with professionals about health care issues and end-of-life concerns. The discussions will include what an individual may or may not want as they are reaching the end of their life and how family members can help.
The sessions begin today at 2 p.m. at Kauai Hospice, 4457 Pahee St., and are open to anyone.
“The purpose of them having this conversation with their family members is so that when a person becomes incapacitated the family knows what their wishes are,” Weiner said. “We know that until recent years we weren’t having enough of these discussions so these issues were never sufficiently discussed.”
Advance directives, which allow a patient’s wishes to be carried out, will be reviewed, too.
Due to the fact that a family could have many children with different ideas on what’s necessary for a loved one, the person’s wishes may not be met with such discussions leading to discord in the families.
“This could be avoided if people could discuss what their wishes might be under different circumstances,” Weiner said. “There’s a lot of knowledge defects regarding issues at the end of life.”
Weiner’s medical co-director, Dr. Michael Plumer, and Dr. Neil Clendeninn, will also participate.
