Something to Think About

I watched my mother nod as her doctor explained her lung cancer. She looked like she understood, but neither of us did. Medical language can be confusing, especially when the...

Doctor’s office visits for health issues are scary, often confusing, and too often complicated with medical terms we don’t understand. And we are generally ill or have health issues that...

Someone has to have the courage to say “We’ve done the best we can. We can’t fix you. Let us help you have some quality time”.

The physician is frontline, the top of the pyramid in healthcare. All care follows from there. The physician can set the tone for the entire patient experience. 

Filling out an Advance Directive when you are healthy is different than filling one out when you are elderly or living with a serious illness...

Number one, we are all going to die at some point. Of course the operative words here are “at some point.” If we are told death will be the outcome...

I want the medical profession, the medical model we find in doctors’ offices and hospitals, to do everything possible to help me not only regain my health, but to return...

It is our job, our responsibility as end of life workers to be honest with our patients. In a “don’t tell mom” situation I first assess where everyone is, who...

How tragic that none can come forward and say, "Your father is dying. Let's stop all these extras and keep him comfortable”. Family as well as many individual physicians do...

Sudden death by accident, suicide and certainly by violence intensifies those normal grief responses. Everything we feel with normal grief is as if we are being held under a magnifying...

Our frontline workers: nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, hospital employees, first responders, housekeeping, grocery, delivery, and transportation personnel, all people who are out front while most of us shelter in place,...