As a hospital-based physician, taking care of the threadworn elderly is the most difficult thing I do. That's because never before in history has it been this hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were "visited" by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process.
Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some pretty dull dentures. It can be a tortuously slow process, with an undeniable end, and our instinct shouldn't be to prolong it.
At some point in life, the only thing worse than dying is being kept alive.
- Craig Bowron, M.D., St. Paul, MN
Books
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Podcasts
- Film Asks "How Would You Like to Live at the End of Your Life?" - Milwaukee Public Radio (featuring the producers of "Consider the Conversation")
- End-of-Life Care in Wisconsin - Wisconsin Public Radio
- The Bitter End - Radiolab
- Many Terminal Cancer Patients Mistakenly Believe a Cure is Possible - Shots: Health News from NPR
- New Technology Means Staving Off Death, More End-of-Life Questions - Milwaukee Public Radio
- What Needs to Change In Order to Die with Dignity - Wisconsin Public Radio
- Sick in America: Americans' Views on Health Care - Morning Edition
- End-of-Life Conversations - Wisconsin Public Radio (featuring the producers of "Consider the Conversation")
- Contemplating Mortality - On Being with Krista Tippett
- Best Care: We Make Death Harder Than It Has To Be - Talk of the Nation
- The Best Care Possible - New Hampshire Public Radio
- How Doctors Choose to Die - Southern California Public Radio
- Communication and Preparation for the End-of-Life - WOSU Public Media (featuring the producers of "Consider the Conversation")
- Lowering Costs by Providing Better Care - Fresh Air
- Why This Wisconsin City is the Best Place to Die - All Things Considered
- Someone Else's Money - This American Life
- More is Less - This American Life
- End-of-Life Care in America: A Doctor's Diagnosis - Fresh Air
- Surgeon Writes of Death, Dying in 'Final Exam' - NPR Weekend Edition
- Medical Care at the End-of-Life - Fresh Air
Websites
- Honoring Choices Wisconsin
- The Conversation Project
- Respecting Choices
- Honoring Choices Minnesota
- National Healthcare Decisions Day
- MyDirectives
- Prepare for Your Care
- Dying Well, Defining Wellness through the End of Life
- And Then There Was One: A Tactical Survival Workbook Following the Loss of a Spouse, Life Partner or Loved One
- Heartfelt Celebrations
- Chrysalis End-of-Life Inspirations
- Caring Connections
- The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care
- Hospice Analytics
- Medicare Hospice Benefit
- Center to Advance Palliative Care
- The Caregivers Path
- Choosing Options, Honoring Options
- National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization
- National Association for Home Care and Hospice
- American Hospice Foundation
- Hospice Foundation of America
- On Our Own Terms
- Growth House
- CaringBridge
- The EPEC (Education in Palliative and End-of-Life Care) Project
Film and Television
- ROCK CENTER WITH BRIAN WILLIAMS: Talking About Death Brings End-of-Life Benefits
- NBC NIGHTLY NEWS: Starting a Conversation as Elderly Loved Ones Age
- 60 MINUTES: The Cost of Dying
- FRONTLINE: Facing Death
Tools for Starting the Conversation
- Conversation Starter Kit (from "The Conversation Project" website)
- From the Start, Consider the Finish (a play adapted from the award-winning bookThe End of Life Advisor: Personal, Legal, and Medical Considerations for a Peaceful, Dignified Death by Susan Dolan and Audrey Vizzard)
- Begin the Conversation
- Advanced Cancer Care Planning
- Tips for Having a Conversation about End-of-Life Care, Palliative Care
- Caring Community: Wellness Through Life's End
- Go Wish Cards
- Engage with Grace
- Talk Early... Talk Often
- DeathWise: Changing the Conversation about Death and Dying
- Five Wishes
Articles
- Religious Support Tied to Intensive End-of-Life Care
- End-of-Life Talks Lacking Between Doctors, Patients
- Hospice Use Rises; So Does Aggressive Care
- End-of-Life Care Rarely Discussed
- Communicating with Patients on Health Care Evidence
- E-mail Reminders Prompt Doctors to Discuss End-of-Life Care, Study Finds
- Advance Care Planning: Ensuring that the Patient's Voice is Heard
- Sites Get People Talking About End-of-Life Care
- 76% of Patients Neglect End-of-Life Planning
- The Doctor Will See You - If You're Quick
- End-of-Life Care: Doctors Urged to Have 'Realistic Conversation' with Patients
- What Doctors Know - and We Can Learn - About Dying
- The Cost of Dying: It's Hard to Reject Care Even as Costs Soar
- How Doctors Die
- A Conversation Many Doctors Won't Have
- Death: Let's Talk About It
- A Father's Last Days
- Preparing for Life's Final Stage
- Open the Discussion on Dying
- Why this Wisconsin City is the Best Place to Die
- La Crosse Health Care Could be Model for National Reform
- Debate Over End-of-Life Care Began in Small Midwestern Town
- Make End-of-Life More Humane
- Overcoming Unconscious Incompetence: Improving Specialty Resident Education
- Law on End-of-Life Care Rankles Doctors
- The Palliative Care Information Act in Real Life
- Frank talk about care at life's end
- In Medicare's Data Trove, Clues to Curing Cost Crisis
- The Hot Spotters: Can We Lower Medical Costs by Giving the Neediest Better Care?
- Waiting in the Dark with Dad
- Dignity in the Final Chapter
- Death Panels Haunt Health Care Debate
- From Butterflies, Lessons About Life and Death
- End-of-Life Care: How You (MDs) Can Help Stressed Surrogates
- Caring for Terminally Ill Starts with a Talk
- Trends and Variation in End-of-Life Care for Medicare Beneficiaries with Severe Chronic Illness
- U.S. Alters Rule on Paying for End-of-Life Planning
- America's Health Care Addiction
- Tracking the Care of Patients with Severe Chronic Illness
- 100 things, leading to a single choice
- The Good Short Life
- Allowing natural death vs. “Do Not Resuscitate” (scroll down to page 3)
- Avoiding the call to hospice
- Death trap: A Vermont-reporter-turned advocate spreads the gospel of dying well
- Doing death better: How we deal with the end of life
- Harry and Louise must die: We could save billions in healthcare if we could accept death and say goodbye outside the hospital
- The dying of the light: The drawn-out indignities of the American way of death
- Advanced dementia: Managing the burden
- Easing Life's Final Choices
- Hospice in the Nursing Home
- Studies: Some nursing home elderly get futile care
- The case for killing granny: rethinking end-of-life care
- The bitter end: My grandmother lived a full life and sought a quiet death. America’s health-care system had a different idea of what was best.
- Facing End-of-Life Talks, Doctors Choose to Wait
- Testimony on House Bill 304 on Physician Assisted Suicide
- Lessons of a $618,616 Death
- End-of-Life Issues Need to be Addressed
- At the End, Offering Not a Cure but Comfort
- What Price for Medical Miracles?
- What Broke My Father's Heart
- Americans are Treated, and Overtreated, to Death
- The cost conundrum: What a Texas town can teach us about health care
- Letting go: What should medicine do when it can't save your life?
- Why doctors need more education about the end-of-life
Photography
Music
