In this episode, I welcome back Hospice Chaplain Hank Dunn. We dive into a crucial yet often misunderstood topic—artificial hydration, nutrition, and voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) at the end of life. We explore how feeding tubes work, when they are beneficial, and when they may prolong suffering. Hank shares stories of patients who regained the ability to eat, those who lived independently with feeding tubes, and others in vegetative states where continued artificial nutrition raised ethical concerns. He also touches on the history of feeding tubes, advancements in medicine, and how pop culture—like Grey’s Anatomy—portrays these issues.
Seeing Death Clearly Ep 60 “How to Make Hard Choices at the End of Life with Chaplain Hank Dunn https://www.buzzsprout.com/2092749/episodes/14879559
“Hank’s Deep Thoughts” https://www.youtube.com/@hankdunn6304
https://www.instagram.com/hospicechaplainhank
https://www.facebook.com/hank.dunn.9
hank@hankdunn.com
Article on “Minimal Comfort Feeding”https://www.jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(24)01116-3/fulltext
The “dementia” advance directive from End of Life Choices New York: https://endoflifechoicesny.org/directives/dementia-directive/
“VSED Resources Northwest” at this link: https://vsedresources.com/
Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking: A C
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