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New Delhi, April 25, 2019 ;
Our health care system promotes saving and extending life at all costs — sometimes sacrificing patients’ own desires on how to spend their final moments. In many families, conversations about how a loved one would prefer to die happen too late or not at all. The emerging field of palliative care seeks to shift how we think about the end of life, how we communicate with doctors and family members, and how we turn those conversations into a plan that guides a final journey.
Dr. Sunita Puri is at the forefront of this field, and her new book, “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour,” harnesses the intimate power of storytelling to spur a deeper discussion about how patients and doctors can work together to restore meaning and dignity to the end of life.
During webinar, Dr. Sunita Puri, author of “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour,” and veteran journalist Fran Smith discussed how reporters, patients and doctors can change the narrative around palliative care and spur deeper conversations about the end of life.Dr. Puri, medical director for palliative care at the Keck Medical Center and Norris Cancer Center of USC, emphasized the power of words when trying to broach the topic of death. Puri encouraged journalists to think about what language patients are using and try mirroring it during interviews. “Asking permission to use scary words can be powerful,” Puri said.
Smith and Puri also discussed how cultural differences and inequalities endured in life shape a patient’s final days. Patients in South LA often experience very different deaths compared to more affluent patients. “We cannot erase all the inequalities in life that become inequalities in death,” Puri said.
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