I had visited Mr. Williams several times over the last few months. In his early 60’s he had been diagnosed with lung cancer after years of tobacco use combined with…
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“It’s not personal. It’s just business.” Is healthcare a business? Should it be a business? These are serious existential questions that need to be answered as palliative care works to…
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. This stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometimes” has made its way into every essay I have written about…
Victor Frankel’s book Man’s Search for Meaning outlines his experiences in the holocaust, the loss of his family and all that was precious to him, and his continued search and…
Over the weekend one of our hospice patients had been brought to the Emergency Department when his temperature was 101. His work-up had revealed WBC’s in his urine and he…
The University of Colorado’s Palliative Care Coursera Specialization launched about a month ago and people all over the world are starting to find their way to the course. I wanted…
I was part of a team of palliative care providers that developed and later worked in the Safe Harbor Palliative Care Unit at the VA Medical Center in Birmingham Alabama. …
I always talk to my Lyft driver. Recently, I was attending a conference in another city so I was taking a Lyft a couple of times a day. As usual…
There is a fever in healthcare. “We are Burning UP! About Burning Out!” Many of us feel burned out at times. Then we read how our colleagues are reporting they…
We only die once. We only have one time to get it right. Working on a palliative care team I have had the honor of caring for thousands of patients…