Mastodon More Good Blogs to Follow ~ Pallimed

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

More Good Blogs to Follow

I have been following Jessica Knapp's blog The Good Death since she came to my attention in some Google Alerts during the run up to the voting on the Washington State I-1000 Medically Assisted Death Initiative. From her About Me Section:
I have always been interested in the way people communicate. In 2004, I earned my MA in communications from Fordham University. Before that, I worked for two years as a research assistant in bioethics, and during that time, I found myself particularly interested in the issues surrounding the way we talk about death and dying. Over the past year, I had a health scare myself, and closely following that, my grandfather died in about the worst possible way you can—in the hospital, hooked up to tubes, with family not completely sure whether they were doing the right thing by letting him go. All of these factors have led me to decide to pursue my PhD in communications with the goal of improving the way we communicate about death. It is something everyone will face, and in America, most of us are afraid to talk about. We need to get better at talking about it so that we can have better deaths. Also, because death can be such a dark and trying subject to deal with, and because I am also a student of media studies, you will see some pop-culture references to death on this site.
Here is a sampling of her posts:

Cybertime - Describing her mother opening an unused email account that her deceased husband had been sending emails to before he died.

Televised Assisted Suicide - About Kevorkian and the recent televising of the act in Britain.

Fantastic Death - An excerpt from a recent book she read.

Another blog I only discovered last week is the only blog I know written by a hospice chaplain. We practically have a hospice team of blogs now! The blog Rainy Nights is written by Ken Bradstock (D. Min.) and combines some personal reflections, some patient stories (names and details changed for HIPPA), and the occasional poem.

Here are some examples of his posts:

How Nice - a poem about the difference between clinical staff and adminsitration.

Book of James - How do you minister a minister?

And lastly, Confessions of a Young Looking Social Worker should hopefully intrigue you enough to check the blog out. (Yes! Now we have a core hospice/palliative care team) The blog is a mix of personal reflections (i.e. the White Sox) and the occasional fictionalized/altered accounts of interactions with staff and patients. There have not been a lot of hospice related posts lately, but here are a few choice ones:

Cross It Off The List - Taking a patient skydiving? Call your hospice social worker!

Ruth - "My favorite patient is dying..."

If you know of any other good hospice & palliative medicine oriented blogs feel free to post them in the comments or email me at ctsinclair - a - t - gmail d0t com.

Hospice & Palliative Medicine Blogs
(in order of age of blog)
**just added**
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