‘Forget the politicians, the real debate about the end of life happens every day in hospitals and homes around the country.’This is the tagline from an online feature about end of life care, palliative care, and the health care debate that a reader (utzgrrl) recently mentioned in a comment. I thought it was worth its own post. I’d never run across FLYP before but it appears to be an online, multi-media heavy (text, images, videos – make sure you look at this on a computer with speakers, that can handle streaming videos) general magazine. This article is overall balanced, sane, and positive about palliative care, and among other things tries to actually describe how these decisions actually happen. You can click around and listen to interviews with patients/families, docs (including some palliative care ones), ethicists, etc.
A refreshing representation of what we actually do, overall, and how these decisions actually get made - what patients and families go through, etc. Thanks utzgrrl.
3 comments:
Drew, thanks for bringing this to your readers' attention - surely one of the more balanced and edifying pieces.
I want to alert you to another example of palliative care in the mass media. The cover of Newsweek (9/21/09) states "The Case for Killing Granny: Curbing Excessive End-of-Life Care is Good For America." The issue also includes an editorial, "I was a Teenage Death Panelist," authored by the editor. (I was looking for light-reading in the airport when I stumbled open this.)
Incidentally, so much media attention to palliative care is helping me build administrative support for growing our consultation service.
Thanks Tim & Steve.
SR: glad to hear your admins are responding with more support. Tell, if you can, how they are using the media coverage to help build your service. I'm assuming it wasn't along the lines of 'Death Panels, eh? Sounds innovative - let's set some up asap!'
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