Palliative Care Blog

How Palliative Care Changed Everything for This Former Military Nurse

Carma Erickson-Hurt, DNP, ACHPN, uses education, clinical skills to ease suffering for people around the world

By Melanie Marshall

As a military nurse working on the oncology floor at Naval Medical Center San Diego, Carma Erickson-Hurt could see the physical, psychosocial, and spiritual suffering affecting patients and families in the throes of serious illness.

She felt there had to be a better way. And when she learned about palliative care, she knew she’d found it.

Now retired from the Navy, Erickson-Hurt devotes much of her life to educating other nurses and clinicians about palliative care, and to applying and teaching its whole-person model as a volunteer in disaster-relief efforts around the world.

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Expert Says Cultural Movement Needed to Transform End of Life Experience in America

By Larry Beresford

Transforming the way our society approaches end of life will take a cultural movement comparable to the natural childbirth movement that reshaped the way we view the birth experience, says Peggy Maguire, president of Cambia Health Foundation.

“We know that how we live well at the end of life can’t be left to the medical professional to decide,” Maguire said in a talk at the recent End Well Symposium in San Francisco. “(The natural childbirth movement) was consumers putting pressure on the system, saying: ‘We want a more human experience.’”

Cambia Health Foundation has invested $30 million in advancing access to palliative care and was the largest philanthropic supporter of End Well, a full day of Ted Talk-type presentations on Dec. 6 that focused on transforming end of life into a human-centered experience.

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Elevating the Role of Unpaid Caregivers

By Larry Beresford

Unpaid caregivers, typically friends or family, provide essential care to people who are serious ill or dying—care that has an economic value of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Yet as a society we don’t take their role seriously enough, or celebrate their incredibly meaningful work, says wellness expert and entrepreneur Alexandra Drane.

Drane underscored that message Dec. 6 at the End Well Symposium in San Francisco, joining a diverse group of thought leaders from across the country presenting ideas on how to improve the end-of-life experience in America. She is co-founder and CEO of Rebel Health and Archangels, an organization focused on connecting unpaid caregivers with local resources and bringing greater recognition to the work they do.

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Happy Holidays From the Institute!

By Jennifer Moore Ballentine

Once upon a time, our family sent out about 200 Christmas cards. Of course, the list was padded by clients and colleagues of our small business, but . . . wow. It was a lot. And, I confess, we resorted to the dreaded form letter, imagining that all our contacts would be breathless with wanting to know what we’d been doing all year! In that spirit . . .

Dear Friends and Family!

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Language Is a Vital Tool in Maximizing Palliative Care

By Larry Beresford

The language we use is crucial to the wider dissemination of the best care possible for patients nearing the end of life, according to Ira Byock, MD, one of the country’s leading voices in palliative care practice and advocacy.

Dr. Byock—a palliative care physician, author, and the Chief Medical Officer at the Institute for Human Caring at Providence St. Joseph Health System—spoke about the power of words Dec. 6 at the End Well Symposium in San Francisco, during a joint session with Anthony Shore, an award-winning linguist and branding consultant.

“I have an obsession about language,” Dr, Byock said, calling words primal human tools that can either constrain people or open them up to all possibilities. Palliative care and hospice have a serious image problem that can be addressed if we use better language, he explained.

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