Sunday, May 31, 2009
End of Life Care in NY Times (Again!)
I am beginning to believe a tweet i saw a few months ago that mentioned the New York Times becoming a great End of Life Care textbook with all the recent articles and editorials.
Dr. Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam: A Surgeon's Reflections: (interviewed on Pallimed in march 2008), and columnist for the NY Times wrote an excellent piece for her Doctor & Patient column which starts off with reflection on the recent death of her mother-in-law.
"In the days since her death, I have often thought about the many conversations my mother-in-law and the family had with the doctors and nurses about the dying process. There was the initial discussion over two months ago that she was likely to die soon and would benefit from hospice, and then there were also the many daily conversations about her comfort, about what she wanted and what she did not"She interviewed Dr. Alexi Wright and Dr. Holly Prigerson from the Coping With Cancer study and featured this article from last October's JAMA.
Nothing spectacularly new to this crowd, but a good well-written piece highlighting what we do. As always with Dr. Chen's editorials, the Tara Parker-Pope's NYT Well blog hosts the 63 + comments which are worth a read.