As elderly population swells, some doctors see benefits of palliative care in the ER
Emergency room physicians are struggling with how to deal with elderly patients with life-limiting conditions in an environment where most clinicians default to lifesaving techniques.
Watch 3:22
In facing death, this doctor sees a way to live well
Dr. BJ Miller does not work to heal patients, but to ensure quality of life amid advanced or serious illness. Sometimes people suggest his job is depressing, but Miller doesn’t see it that way. When people are dying it changes…
Watch 7:03
When patients live far from care, video conferencing can be a palliative support lifeline
People facing life-threatening illnesses often access palliative care to ease their pain and help with difficult end-of-life choices. But for those living in remote, rural areas, getting that comforting care can be unwieldy. Special correspondent Joanne Elgart Jennings reports on…
Why is it so difficult to talk about end of life wishes?
As medical advances have lengthened our life spans and can improve quality of life as we get older, many people remain reluctant to have end of life conversations with their physicians and loved ones.
Here are 5 things that advocates from the "Conversation Project" say you should know about starting a conversation about end-of-life care with your loved ones.
Modern medicine has a fundamental failure in its approach toward aging and dying, says Dr. Atul Gawande: “We don't recognize that people have priorities besides just living longer.” Gawande, a surgeon and the author of a new book, "Being Mortal:…
Specialists at the Dartmouth Healthcare Atlas maintain that one of the main drivers of this phenomenon is quantity: people end up in hospitals here so often, they say, because this region simply has a lot of hospital beds.
Recent studies have indicated that barely a third of patients report having substantive conversations with their oncologists about end-of-life care, a statistic some physicians are looking to change. Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser reports.
