This program discusses care at the end of life, primarily focusing on palliative care of individuals and their families.

ICU doctor Blair Bigham shares his first-hand experiences of how medicine has complicated the way we die and offers a road map for dying in the modern era. Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive. In this new era, most organs can be kept from dying almost indefinitely by machines. But this unprecedented shift in end-of-life care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life...

All of us are entitled to the rewards of a peaceful, pain-free death. This book honors that with true stories about hospice patients and inspiring insights from the author. Becoming Dead Right guides us through the general and "how to" information maze that prepares us for dealing with death. Improving and expanding hospice services will require systemic changes in healthcare institutions, outreach to diverse populations, and funding. With the inclusion...

"An inspiring, informative, and practical guide to navigating end of life issues, by a groundbreaking expert in the field and the New York Times bestselling author of Knocking on Heaven's Door. In the mid-1400s, an unnamed Catholic monk composed a popular self-help book called Ars Moriendi, or The Art of Dying. Written in Latin, this medieval death manual taught people how to navigate the trials of the deathbed, using simple rituals of repentance,...

During a pandemic lockdown full of pyjama dance parties, life talks, and final goodbyes, a family helps a father die with dignity. In April 2020, journalist Mitchell Consky received bad news: his father was diagnosed with a rare and terminal cancer, with less than two months to live. Suddenly, he and his extended family--many of them health care workers--were tasked with navigating the distance of the Covid-19 pandemic with a family-based approach...

"Modern medical technology is allowing us to live longer and fuller lives than ever before. And for the most part, that is good news. But with changes in the way we understand medicine come changes in the way we understand death. Once a familiar, peaceful, and gentle -- if sorrowful -- transition, death has come to be something from which we shield our eyes, as we prefer to fight desperately against it rather than accept its inevitability. Dr. Kathryn...

"An ICU and Palliative Care specialist featured in the Netflix documentary Extremis offers a framework for a better way to exit life that will change our medical culture at the deepest level In medical school, no one teaches you how to let a patient die. Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care--to become an ICU physician--and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from the...

A short experimental film by Tracey Moffatt, shot totally in a studio, about the relationship between an Aboriginal daughter and her white mother. The daughter, now the sole carer of her dying mother, dreams of far away places.

In a heartbeat, you or someone you love may be rapidly transformed from a life of health and wellness to one of critical illness. Over the past four decades, Ronald Kotler, M.D., has treated patients who have become critically ill. He has seen patients recover and go on to lead long, healthy lives. He has also treated patients who did not survive. In this medical memoir, Dr. Kotler takes readers to the frontlines of caring for critically ill patients...

Viewing the process of dying in terms of a rite of passage, a Zen teacher introduces her contemplative approach to the dying process that draws on her thirty years of working with the dying to provide comfort and inspiration for those dealing with death.