Two brothers-in-law who live next door to one another in rural Northern California have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Yet crucially only one has access to palliative care.
Discomfort with end-of-life care discussions is not uncommon among many older immigrants in the United States.
Author and physician Sunita Puri talks to journalist Fran Smith about why journalists should be telling these stories — and how they can do so in a more thoughtful way.
There’s strong evidence that palliative care can improve the quality of life for terminal and chronically ill patients, while reducing emergency room visits and hospitalizations by as much as half.
Poor people, people in isolated, rural areas and minorities are least likely to receive palliative care and counseling about end-of-life decisions. And one-third of U.S. hospitals don’t have a palliative care team.
In my last blog post, I wrote about pain and addiction, and quoted my palliative care doctor. Some readers took that to mean that I am at the end of the road, so to speak, since I am calling for palliative care. No, I’m not! (At least I hope I’m not.)
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
The most valuable lessons I've learned have come from memories captured off the record.
For most politicians dealing with Medicare reform, end-of-life cost is one issue that dare not speak its name. Here's what you need to know about this "third-rail" topic.
Big money in Calif. tobacco tax battle, big growth in palliative care, and big turf battles between dentists and "dental therapists," plus more from our Daily Briefing.
