Dementia and Your End of Life Options

The Funeral Consumer Society of Colorado is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, January 6, 2026: Dementia and Your End of Life Options. (I am making a similar presentation on January 17, 2026 for HSSD.)  

They have two leading experts joining to discuss Medical Aid in Dying (MAID), euthanasia, voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED), dementia directives involving the withdrawal or withholding of food and fluids, and other key end-of-life topics.

Dr. Karl Steinberg has been a nursing home, hospice, and home health agency medical director and chief medical officer in the San Diego area since 1995.  He received his bachelor’s in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard and studied medicine at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, taught high school in New York City for three years, then completed his family medicine residency at University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 1990.  He has board certifications in family medicine and in hospice and palliative medicine, and is certified as a nursing home and hospice medical director in addition to having a certification as a healthcare ethics consultant.  

Dr. Steinberg enjoys presenting at educational conferences to professional audiences and the public, and also serves as a consultant and testifying expert witness in civil lawsuits and regulatory matters. He hosts two regular podcasts (PALTtalk with JAMDA and PALTtalk with Caring) for PALTmed that discuss the organization’s publications. But Dr. Steinberg is perhaps best known for taking his poodles on patient care rounds with him on a regular basis. 

Dr. Stanley Terman has devoted the last 15 years of his career in psychiatry and bioethics to developing a user-friendly, clinically effective patient decision aid plus a set of strategies that will likely succeed where other living wills/advance directives may fail.

The goal is to facilitate patients’ success in experiencing a private, peaceful, and timely dying and to avoid prolonged dying with suffering for any terminal illness, especially advanced dementia. Dr. Terman considers the greatest reward he can receive is to reduce the suffering of patients and their relatives who face the huge challenge of advanced dementia.