Featured notes
Senate endorses dignified death and palliative care for terminally ill→
Excelsior
The Senate unanimously approved 109 votes changes to Article IV of the Constitution to establish in the Magna Carta the dignified death and palliative care.
IPN promotes palliative care speciality →
Instituto Politécnico Nacional
To improve palliative care in terminally ill patients, the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) seeks to promote a specialty in that area, so it works on the design of the academic program that it intends to implement together with the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS)…
Frenchman Vincent Lambert dies after years-long life support battle
→
CNN
Paris (CNN)Vincent Lambert, a former nurse whose case had come to symbolize France’s right-to-die debate, has died.
Topic of the month
ADVANCE WILL
What is advance will?
It is a legal document through which a competent person commits to paper his will regarding the medical treatments he/she would accept or refuse to receive if he/she were to find himself/herself in a situation where he/she could not express personally his/her will. The advanced will comes into force when the person is no longer competent to express it.
Format and payments
The advanced will document is issued at no cost in public, private and social health institutions; however, the signature of such document before a notary public has a cost of MEX$1200.00 and, in the case of adults over 65 years, the cost is MEX$400.00.
Requirements
- Be over 18 years.
- Be in full use of your mental faculties.
- Go to a Notary Public.
- Choose a representative and a substitute representative.
- Sign the document before two witnesses.
- Present official identification of the applicant, representatives and witnesses.
Next topic: What is Palliative Care?
Glossary
Advance Will
It is a way allowing a competent person to put in writing his will concerning the treatments he would want or he would not want to receive if he were to find himself in a situation where he could not express his will himself. The advance directive comes into force when the person becomes unable to make those decisions.
Assisted Suicide
It is the help that a doctor gives to a patient in response to his request, and it consists in providing him with the means to put an end to his life. The help may be to give him a prescription for a lethal dose of a drug or the drug itself. The patient himself executes the final action that causes death.
Euthanasia
Etymologically it means “good death”, and it refers to the action that a doctor performs to induce the death of a patient who has freely requested it because he is enduring an intolerable suffering for which there is no relief, and that is caused by a disease or a medical condition for which there are no healing options.
Palliative Care
It is the active and total care of those patients who do not respond to a healing treatment, in which it is a priority to provide relief through the treatment of pain and other symptoms, as well as to care for the psychological, social and spiritual aspects.
