A Better Way of Dying: How to Make the Best Choices at the End of Life

The fail-safe plan for ensuring one's final wishes are respected

Advanced directives and living wills have improved our ability to dictate end-of-life care, but even these cannot guaran-tee that we will be allowed the dignity of a natural death. Designed by two sisters-one a doctor, one a lawyer-and drawing on their decades of experience, the five-step Compassion Protocol outlined in A Better Way of Dying offers a simple and effective framework for leaving caretakers concrete, unambiguous, and legally binding instructions about your wishes for your last days. Meant for people in every walk of life-from the elderly, to those in the early stages of mentally degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, to healthy young people planning for an unpredictable future-this book creates space for a discussion we all must have if we wish to ensure comfort and control at the end of our lives..

Author: Jeanne Fitzpatrick,Eileen M. Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 01/26/2010
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.38lbs
Size: 7.80h x 5.06w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780143116752

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/15/2010 pg. 129
Publisher's Weekly Annex 02/08/2010

About the Author
Jeanne Fitzpatrick, MD, is the coauthor of A Better Way of Dying: How to Make the Best Choices at the End of Life. For more than 25 years, Dr. Fitzpatrick has practiced emergency medicine in small cities and rural areas around the United States. She works in the emergency department at Santiam Memorial Hospital in Stayton, Oregon.

Eileen M. Fitzpatrick is the coauthor of A Better Way of Dying: How to Make the Best Choices at the End of Life. Fitzpatrick has been a licensed lawyer for more than 30 years. She received her BA in 1983 from State University of New York at Binghamton and her JD from Harvard University in 1986. She lives in New Hampshire.

William Colby is the author of Unplugged: Reclaiming our Right to Die in America. Colby also wrote the foreword to A Better Way of Dying: How to Make the Best Choices at the End of Life. He is a lawyer who in 1989 represented a family in the first right-to-die case heard by the US Supreme Court.