By Christina Leslie | Correspondent

Catholic citizens and their loved ones were urged to initiate prayerful conversations with one another about life’s last moments on National Healthcare Decision Day April 16.  Marked on this date for the past seven years, NHDD encourages healthcare providers, patients and their families and loved ones to consider end-of-life decisions, make their wishes known, and record them in an advanced care directive.

The Federal Patient Self-Determination Act requires hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare centers to keep a copy of their patients’ advanced care directives on file and refer to it during treatment. The directives, also known as living wills or medical powers of attorney, cover treatment including artificial resuscitation, ventilation, and artificial nutrition and fluids when these treatment opportunities arise.

“Though about 75 percent of people know about advanced directives, less than 10 percent of them have one,” noted John Kalinowski, director of the diocesan department of Pastoral Care. In an effort to educate patients on the important faith-based version of the document, he noted, “Our chaplains distribute Catholic advanced care directives at area hospitals such as Robert Wood Johnson University [Hamilton] and St. Francis Hospital, Trenton.”

Those Catholics wishing to fill out these healthcare directives can find direction from the website of the N.J. Catholic Conference. Excerpts from the Catechism of the Catholic Church that discuss healthcare are presented, and a printable form which can be filled out, signed and added to a patient’s medical file also is available. This advanced directive, approved by the N.J. Catholic Bishops, is available in both English and Spanish at www.njcathconf.com/docs/respect_life/Advance%20Directives%20for%20Health%20Care%202011.pdf.

Additional information regarding ethical, religious-based advance directives can be found on the USCCB website at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/health-care/upload/Ethical-Religious-Directives-Catholic-Health-Care-Services-fifth-edition-2009.pdf.

Everyone ought to complete an advanced directive regardless of their age or medical condition, Kalinowski urged, and patients should bring a current document each time they are admitted to a healthcare facility.

“The [department and this program] want to make sure any Catholic patient is aware of what a living will is about and the Catholic teachings that surround the document,” he concluded.

Though National Healthcare Decision Day comes but once a year, the conversation on ethical medical treatment is appropriate year round. The U.S. Catholic Bishops, in their statement entitled “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services”, wrote,

“The moral teachings that we profess here flow principally from the natural law, understood in the light of the revelation Christ has entrusted to his Church… The mystery of Christ casts light on every facet of Catholic health care: to see Christian love as the animating principle of health care; to see healing and compassion as a continuation of Christ’s mission; to see suffering as a participation in the redemptive power of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection; and to see death, transformed by the resurrection, as an opportunity for a final act of communion with Christ.”

For further information on advanced care directives, see the N.J. Catholic Conference website at www.njcathconf.com, or contact John Kalinowski, Department of Pastoral Care, at 609-403-7157.