In July of 2013, NPR Weekend Edition host Scott Simon began tweeting from the ICU of a Chicago hospital. For the next week, as he watched his mother’s condition worsen until her eventual passing, he shared everything from interactions with ICU nurses to his mother’s wisecracks and life lessons with his thousands of Twitter followers. [...]
Being Mortal Dying is an inevitable part of life. In the manner that we celebrate and discuss the process of birth, why we can’t discuss the process of death? Even for medical professionals, who have seen people going through the process of dying more than anyone else, they are not completely comfortable talking about it [...]
Physician-Assisted Death in the Renal Unit? A special four-part series on the various struggles physicians face with the legalization of Physician-Assisted Death. PART FOUR In Conversation with Drs Rauf Sirman, Sonu Gaind and James Downar The series ends with a discussion between presenters Drs Rauf Sirman, Sonu Gaind, and James Downar and the audience comprised of community/academic [...]
Physician-Assisted Death in the Renal Unit? A special four-part series on the various struggles physicians face with the legalization of Physician-Assisted Death. PART THREE Physician-Assisted Death in Canada: Where We Are, Where We Are Going Presented by Dr. James Downar Dr. Downar expands upon Dr. Gainds lecture by exploring the various infringements in mental illness brought up in [...]
Physician-Assisted Death in the Renal Unit? A special four-part series on the various struggles physicians face with the legalization of Physician-Assisted Death. PART TWO Do Not Harm – Help Me Die: Navigating Mental Health Issues in the Turbulent Waters of Intolerable Suffering and (Ir)remediability Presented by Dr. Sonu Gaind Dr. Sonu Gaind opens up his lecture by [...]
Physician-Assisted Death in the Renal Unit? A special four-part series on the various struggles physicians face with the legalization of Physician-Assisted Death. PART ONE Withdrawal from Dialysis: The HRH Experience Presented by Dr. Rauf Sirman Dr. Sirman presents the psychiatric cases of two renal patients. He describes the psychic makeup of a renal patient requesting dialysis cessation, and [...]
With the recent legalization of physician-assisted death in Canada, what’s next? The legislation of physician-assisted death has Canadian provinces and territories scrambling to formulate the legal rules and regulations for providing this care. Health care professionals are committed first and foremost to improving and maintaining their patients' quality quantity of life, which poses serious concerns around the philosophical, [...]
