We each make personal health care decisions on a regular basis. Doctors ask whether you will accept a treatment by discussing the risks and benefits and working with you to make that decision. Everyone has the right to make these decisions; but what if you can no longer make your own decisions due to illness or injury? In these cases, an Advance Directive speaks for you to help make sure your personal beliefs are respected.

Give your family and medical team the gift of knowing what your healthcare decisions are if you cannot make them on your own.

Facts about an Advanced Directive:

• It’s free!  You don’t need a lawyer or a notary. You can even download the document for free from the Office of the Attorney General.
• An Advance Directive is only for medical, not financial, decisions while you are still alive. It is not a Power of Attorney.
• Be sure to review your Advanced Directive frequently to make sure your preferences haven’t changed.
• Keep the original in a safe place and give copies to your family, doctor, and hospital. Copies are as valid as an original!

If you’d like to pick up an Advance Directive packet or ask questions, HCGH will provide an information table on the following day:

Tuesday, April 26
11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. AND 2:30-4 p.m.
Howard County General Hospital
Pavilion Lobby
5755 Cedar Lane
Columbia, MD

Howard County General also provides monthly Advance Directive classes through the Wellness Center. Leslie Rogers, MSW, LCSW-C, OSW-C, clinical oncology social worker at HCGH and director of the Claudia Mayer Cancer Resource Center reviews what advance directives are, who needs them, and how to get them, as well as what it means to appoint, or to be appointed, a health care agent. Registration is required for this free event. The next session is scheduled for Thursday, May 12 from 6-7 p.m. Call 410-740-5858 or visit www.hcgh.org for more information.

The theme for Earth Day 2011 on April 22nd is “A Billion Acts of Green,” to encourage personal, organizational and corporate pledges to live and act sustainably. Howard County General Hospital’s Green Team is celebrating by launching an easy-to-use single-stream recycling system with marked containers located throughout the hospital. Earth Day at HCGH will also be a work space and Hospital campus “clean-up” day when we’ll encourage employees to de-clutter their work areas and get outside for a walk, picking up trash on the way and depositing it in recycle containers that will be available.

The HCGH Green Team had a number of other achievements over the past year:

• launching a Farmers’ Market,
• virtually eliminating the use of mercury in the hospital
• replacing all lighting in the hospital with energy-efficient light bulbs
• purchasing environmentally friendly cleaning products
• reducing the hospital’s percentage of red waste (biohazardous).

There’s still a lot of work to do and, as Debra Dennis, HCGH director of Environmental Services and leader of the Green Team noted, “The greening of hospitals isn’t an extra-curricular activity and it doesn’t end with Earth Day. It is a vitally important matter that affects the health and well-being of our patients, employees and fellow residents of Planet Earth. It isn’t just the in thing to do. It’s the right thing.”

To further this goal, on June 27 from 7-8:30 p.m., Dennis is presenting a free program “Going Green: It’s a Personal Thing” at the Wellness Center (10710 Charter Drive, Suite 100, Columbia, MD). The class will explain, from A to Z, how easy it is to be sustainable at home and to emphasize the difference individuals can make by reducing their personal carbon footprints.

For more information call 410-740-7601 or visit hcgh.org. You can be counted by going to earthday.org and registering your personal or group act of green – a commitment to improving the environment on Earth Day and throughout the year.