Hillary Lum, M.D., Ph.D. and Jean Abbott, M.D., Ph.D. will address numerous practical and ethical issues regarding how the use of advance directives impacts their medical treatment of patients, including:

• How they assist, as well as limit, medical providers
• Issues surrounding withdrawal of life support and artificial nutrition and hydration
• How they affect decision-making authority
• The use of MOST, MAID, and the physician proxy law
• How they interact with palliative care and hospice
• When ethics committees can be helpful
• The challenges of cognitive impairment, competence, and decisional capacity
• A guardian’s involvement in Medical Aid in Dying

And more!

About the Speakers:

Hillary Lum, MD

Hillary is an Associate Professor, Medicine-Geriatrics at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine.  She practices at the UCH-Seniors Clinic, as well as the Anschutz Outpatient Pavilion. She has completed Board Certifications in Geriatric Medicine, Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Internal Medicine, and is a Health and Aging Policy Fellow.

Hillary graduated from the University of Wisconsin, School of Medicine and Public Health, after receiving a PhD from the University of Wisconsin.  She is a member of the Public Policy Committee of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and holds a membership with the American Geriatrics Society.

It is Hillary’s passion to help older adults and their families be able to express, with confidence, their preferences for future care.  She developed a website which guides this process: Advance Care Planning.  She completed this important work through a grant from the National Palliative Care Research Center.

Jean Abbott, MD

Jean is a Professor Emerita in Emergency Medicine and has been at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine, and Anschutz Medical Center as an EM Attending for 34 years. She retired several years ago from clinical work in the Emergency Department. For 15 years, she was the lead for the ethics consultation service at University of Colorado Hospital.  She is nationally certified in hospital ethics consultation and remains a member of the UCH Ethics Committee. Now she is working primarily at the Center for Bioethics and with Palliative Care colleagues for a 2-year on-line Master in Palliative Care degree program at CU!

Jean graduated from Bryn Mawr College, University of Pennsylvania SOM, practiced community Emergency Medicine in multiple places around the country, and joined the EM faculty here in Colorado in 1985. She received a Masters in Humanities from the CU Denver campus 15 years ago, and now is on the faculty at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities on the Anschutz Campus.

Currently, Jean speaks extensively on Advance Care Planning, The Conversation Project, and topics around end-of-life in her community and to physician groups.  She is a co-writer of the 2016 amendment to the Colorado proxy law, HB 16-1101, to allow physicians to be a proxy of last resort for people in acute care hospitals who are “unrepresented.”  In 2019, as a follow-up, she worked on passage of the pared-down pilot guardianship law, HB 19-1045 – hoping to develop more nimble and effective guardianship for vulnerable patients in Colorado.

More Information

Members attend CGA meetings at no additional cost, as a benefit of their membership.

For 2020: Non-members can attend for free!

We look forward to “seeing” you at the event!

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