Something to Think About

In the months and weeks before death, medical intervention and medical tools are an active part of care. Pain management, skin care, mouth care,and bowel and urine care are all...

Most of the time this restlessness, this agitation is not destructive. It is not severe. If the movements become thrashing about or hurtful and become a danger to the person...

I'm going to start by being blunt: hospice, end of life workers, hospitals, and nursing facilities make their money only as long as the people they serve are alive.. They...

In the days to weeks before gradual death occurs a person realizes, at last, that they are dying. They may not share that realization with anyone, but they know. If...

As for the “signs of what is to come” for someone who is young and dying, those signs are also the same for everyone, young and old. People dying from...

I know that dementia doesn’t play by the rules of approaching death. The guidelines relating to food, sleep and sociability don’t fit with dementia. I know that  I am seeing...

If I think my patient is having thoughts of suicide, we will talk about it. Is there a plan? Are they just questioning life and dying or have they reached...

Hospice provides care and services for people in the last six months of their life. A doctor must specify, in his/her best opinion, that this person has less than  six...

Taking care of someone at the end of life is different from taking care of someone who is going to get better—-but most people don’t know that either. Unless we...

We human beings are complicated creatures. We approach death in the way we have approached living and according to our personality. Our belief systems are part of that living. Sometimes...

I think we healthcare workers rely on our words as our offering. Explanations, suggestions, instructions, even using words to offer condolences and trying to comfort. And yes, words are a...

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...

Our base nature comes out when we are in pain, other worldly, and on high doses of all kinds of medications.  We are unconsciously expressing the terrible situation we were...

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...

If you have a good, amicable relationship then get them together and say, with caring in your heart, "I am going to tell you some things I have learned about...

She is gone, the house seems emptier. Baxter cat (who we let smell her before she left) seems at a bit of a loss, as he wanders the house. Is...

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...

Hospice is widely known for providing end of life care. It has grown in size and in its original scope of services. Even its definition of “end of life care”...

With old age and no active debilitating disease process, all the signs of approaching death (less eating, more sleeping and gradual decline in social interests) occur, BUT they occur over...

All the work we do leads up to the moment of death. Our goal is to guide and support those present through the moment the last breath occurs.

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...