Events - Event View

$5.00 to $10.00 Sliding scale fee for all non-members at the door (cash or check)

Dr. Hope Wechkin, Medical Director for EvergreenHealth Home Health & Hospice, will provide an overview of the options individuals have when they have serious illness and are facing a diminishing quality of life: everything from discontinuing life-prolonging therapies like dialysis and cardiac devices, to declining interventions like antibiotics for recurrent infections,  to actively hastening death through measures like medical aid in dying (aka Death with Dignity) and Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED). Dr. Wechkin will discuss where each are located along the spectrums of “standard of care,” institutional support, and ethical complexity.  This should be an informative and thought-provoking presentation.

Dr. Hope Wechkin is the medical director of EvergreenHealth Home Care Services (Hospice and Home Health) in Kirkland, WA. She has served on the medical staff of the Palliative Care Consult Service at the University of Washington Medical Center, developed and led the EvergreenHealth Palliative Medicine program from 2007-2021, and is a member of the clinical faculty of the University of Washington School of Medicine.  Dr. Wechkin is the past chair of the Washington State Medical Association’s Serious Illness Care Coalition, served as course chair for the first-ever national conference on “planned death” at the University of Washington in 2019, and is lead author on the first national clinical guidelines for voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) published in 2023.