When I was a student nurse, one of my first patients was an 18 year old youth who had been paralyzed from the waist down only a month before. The other teens did not survive that New Year’s Eve car crash 30 years ago. My patient was “the lucky one.”

From that experience and others that showed me how quickly our lives can change, I understood perfectly the rational for including a discussion about advance directives during a routine history and physical exam, even with those who were ...