ACU professor wants to educate people in planning for last days
By LORETTA FULTON
Senior Staff Writer
A common question friends ask students in Dr. Dickie Hill's seminars is, "What in the world would you be taking that class for?"
Most of the students in the Abilene Christian University professor's class are ages 20 to early 30s. The course is titled "Seminar in Death and Dying."
It's no wonder friends are surprised. People in their 20s and 30s don't normally talk about death.
But Hill, an ACU professor for 22 years, said people would be surprised at how many students take the course. Hill started the class 23 years ago when he was a professor in the physical education department at the University of Oklahoma.
His first class there drew about 15 students. Now it's common for larger universities to attract 500 students to those classes, he said.
That's a good trend, Hill believes, and other professionals would agree. A lack of education seems to be the main obstacle standing in the way of people taking basic measures such as getting a living will and durable power of attorney, caregivers say.
With people living longer than before, sometimes by artificial means, planning ahead for the last days is vital.
"It's only going to get worse with newer technology," Hill said.
Hill's course covers everything from the spiritual aspects of death and dying to the practical. A course assignment requires students to make out their will and some are surprised to learn that it is a legal document, Hill said.
Although today's students come into Hill's class with limited knowledge just as his first ones did, he has noticed a change in attitude over the past 23 years.
Today's students are more at ease, more vocal, and more questioning than 23 years ago.
"They're not shy about asking questions in class," Hill said.
And he believes interest in the class at such a young age is a good sign that people are beginning to plan for the future now.
Although classes such as Hill's are more and more common in undergraduate and graduate schools, they aren't in the very place they should be, Hill said.
"The amazing thing is how little education there is in the medical schools," he said.
Doctors are trained to save lives and are reluctant to admit they can't always do that. Older doctors especially feel like a failure when they can't save a patient, Hill said.
Even though medical school attention to working with terminal patients and their loved ones is still limited, younger doctors are getting better at saying, "You're in the dying process, let me help," Hill said. "The younger ones coming out do a better job than older ones."
At the other end of the spectrum are the senior citizens, some of whom are as reluctant as young students to accept the reality of death.
"We try to teach them how to let go," said Joe McKissick with the Pruett Gerontology Center at Abilene Christian University.
A 92-year-old woman recently asked McKissick, "Is it all right to want to die?"
Many older people are reluctant to make out a living will or obtain a durable power of attorney, McKissick said. Men, in particular, can be obstinate.
"It's male ego," McKissick said. "They're people who have been in control."
And it's that loss of control that seems to be the most difficult part of the dying process, McKissick said. Today's 70, 80 and 90-year-olds grew up as independent people who had to struggle to survive. They made their own way and don't want to relinquish that independence, even when it's inevitable, McKissick said.
McKissick has found that people are reluctant to take the initiative for obtaining advance directives or preparing a will on their own, but will do so in a group setting, and he is using that to his advantage.
"If the group is going to do it, they're willing to do it, too, and sometimes that day," McKissick said.
So more and more, McKissick is talking to groups and suggesting they work together to take care of their personal business.
Like Hill, McKissick sees change coming. Just 10 years ago when he started his job, McKissick wasn't welcomed to speak on aging, death, and dying at church groups on Sundays.
Now he travels the country conducting seminars in churches, speaking to Sunday School classes for the elderly, and spreading information any way he can.
"It's changing tremendously," he said. He credits the media, including mainline TV programs, with prompting that change.
Programs such as 60 Minutes and 20/20 that bring death and dying out of the closet and into the living room help tremendously, McKissick said.
"They're educating the public," he said.