“We’ve done the best we can and we can’t fix you...”
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”.
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...
Our children are not supposed to die before we do. I cannot think of any grief more intense than watching our child deteriorate before our eyes. We grieve their dying...
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 job as an end of life specialist is to address the elephant in the room, to be direct and honest in the gentlest way possible. We are not doing...
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,...