After traumatic brain injury, life support decisions can use more time
Deciding whether to withdraw life support after a severe traumatic brain injury is extremely difficult….
Category: end of life
Opinion: Hospices can’t handle the growing number of patients who need wound care
A few years ago, I worked with a patient close to 100 years old. She…
STAT+: A Harvard-affiliated hospital is testing magic mushrooms on dying patients
Sixty years after Harvard fired Timothy Leary over his experiments with psychedelic drugs, a hospital…
Opinion: How to take care of trans patients in hospice
In the United States, more than 1.6 million people identify as transgender. Of these, more…
Opinion: Hospice care needs saving
Hospice in America is gravely ill. An extensive investigation jointly published by The New Yorker…
STAT+: She was a celebrated oncologist. Why did she hide her breast cancer until it was too late?
When Barrett Rollins walked into the bathroom of his Beacon Hill home, he was stunned…
In the label ‘adult failure to thrive,’ medicine reveals its own failures
The death certificate made everything worse. Seth Fischer was already angry: a physical feeling, an…
Opinion: Mainstream medicine must embrace palliative care services
Even before the onset of Covid-19, there were legions of people with serious illnesses in…
Opinion: Listen: The faces of Covid at 1 million deaths and counting
When Covid-19 began tearing across the U.S. in March 2020, Alex Goldstein started posting on…
Opinion: One million reasons to reimagine end-of-life care
The magnitude of loss from Covid-19 — 1 million-plus deaths, many millions more grieving loved…
Opinion: Listen: Covid turned the nation’s eyes to nursing homes. Have we already looked away?
When the Covid-19 pandemic began tearing across the country, it hit nursing homes hard. More…
Opinion: Listen: A physician and philosopher on the dangers of ‘curating’ natural deaths and executions
Americans have a tendency to fixate on what’s commonly thought of of as “a good…
Opinion: What the death rattle and capital punishment have in common
Death rattle. That’s the sound some dying people make, caused by a buildup of mucus…
Opinion: That ‘damn machine’: the dark side of mechanical ventilators in the ICU
I walk in to Mr. W’s room to say hello. He is 73 years old…
Opinion: For-profit nursing homes and hospices are a bad deal for older Americans
Nursing homes and hospice care are supposed to provide safe refuges for older people and…
Picturing the ‘patience, love, and devotion’ of Alzheimer’s care
Alzheimer’s disease runs in photographer Jalal Shamsazaran’s family: his aunt, grandfather, and father, Majid, all…
Opinion: Rethinking Black Friday to include end-of-life conversations
With more than 250,000 Americans killed by Covid-19, it’s time to think about reimagining Black…
She’s spent decades caring for dying patients. When her mom’s time came, Covid-19 kept them apart
When Sharon Levine picked up, the person on the other end was sobbing. It was…
Opinion: Palliative care needs tweaking in the coronavirus era
“This is my fault. I’m the one who got her sick,” my patient’s son tells…
A cancer patient reconsiders her end-of-life wishes, as Covid-19 brings mortality into sharper focus
Even before she knew what kind of cancer she had, Robin Hodges knew she didn’t…
Opinion: The right words matter when talking about advance directives
We are being told to do a lot of things these days: Wash your hands….
Opinion: While social distancing, do your other patriotic duty: have The Conversation about serious illness care
At no time since World War II has there been a clarion call for the…
Opinion: A daughter’s plea: Doctors must stop shirking palliative care
The first time I lost my dad was in 2010, just a few weeks after…
Opinion: Armchair philosophizing doesn’t help conscious patients in vegetative states
“Imagine.” This word let a severely brain injured patient tell neuroscientists she was still conscious…
Opinion: Some people in persistent vegetative states have working minds. Does keeping them in limbo amount to torture?
Imagine for a minute — or even for a few seconds — that your working…
Opinion: More Americans are dying at home. Is that a good thing?
How Americans die has fundamentally changed with advances in medical technology and the ways diseases…