The Discovery Pod
Palliative Care: The Importance of Informed End-Of-Life Choices with Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider
More and more unfortunate patients are spending their final weeks, days, and minutes of life hidden away from the people they love, and sometimes they are in significant amounts of pain. Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, a physician and a palliative care activist, believes that a new day of medicine is coming where the end of life is not a medical issue to be solved, but rather something that all human beings should be reflecting on personally and talking about in their own lives. Struck by the number of older, more frail adults ending up in the ICU where the most aggressive, invasive care gets provided, Shoshana realized that her passion in life was making sure that her patients and their families’ end-of-life experience was in line with their goals and values. Today, Shoshana joins host Douglas Nelson in examining illness in the context of the whole picture of someone’s life and how physicians, nurses, and other providers of healthcare can come up with a plan of care that focuses on having them live their best day every day, no matter how many days they have left.