Many of you are aware of hospice, either as inpatient or free standing service, which is a program providing a comprehensive set of services. These services include those that offer comfort and assistance to terminally ill patients with less than 6 months to live. Continue reading
Category Archives: Advance Care Planning/End of Life Care
Longevity calculator
The Brits have come up with an interesting on-line calculator which enables people between ages 40 and 70 to estimate their risk of dying within the coming five years. The calculator relies on a massive database looking at 500,000 people living in Britain to assess what factors tend to foretell or forestall mortality. For men, the strongest Continue reading
First, do no harm. Next… ?
Physicians live by the highest code of ethics. Primum non nocere, or first, do no harm, is a principle we all hear in medical school and which follows us throughout our careers. It reflects the importance of physicians, and all clinicians, avoiding actions which are Continue reading
End-of-life discussions before the end of life
Partnership HealthPlan is a strong advocate for having end-of-life wishes discussed well before the end of life arrives. By doing so, it is more likely that patients’ own individual desires will be followed. It also can reduce the stress on Continue reading
Movie recommendation – Wit is well worth watching
In our blog’s first, but hopefully not last, cultural review, I encourage all readers to watch the movie Wit, which first appeared on HBO television in 2001. Directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson, Wit is one of the most powerful movies Continue reading
Palliative care — a new tool in our arsenal
For those of us who take care of aging, increasingly frail patients, the office visits can be very difficult. These encounters invariably last longer than the time allotted. The patient’s needs are often crescendoing with each visit. Symptoms proliferate and Continue reading
Death on a Saturday morning in January
At 2:17 am last Saturday, my wife and I knew the end was near. My mother-in-law was resting in her hospice-provided hospital bed in our extra downstairs room. My wife lay on a couch feigning sleep on one side, while I tried to rest on a futon on the other side. My mother-in-law suddenly Continue reading
Communicating bad news – an art and a science
(Thanks to Doug Wilson, MD, president of the Napa County Medical Society, for the idea for this post.)
One of our hardest jobs as physicians is delivering bad news. It is emotionally draining, time-consuming, and uncomfortable. Most of us received very little training in Continue reading
The holidays are a great time to discuss end-of-life issues
Encouraging our patients to start thinking about and planning for their end-of-life care is always a challenge. During any given office visit, numerous competing issues vie for time. And when clinicians do surface the topic of Advance Directives, our patients often wonder Continue reading
Do doctors die differently?
Now that is a good question, and no one knows the answer for sure. But there is substantial anecdotal evidence that doctors are more likely than others to have their Advance Directive filled out and are more likely to die as they would wish. According to Continue reading