One step at a time.
Changing the World
What if the reason ACP underdelivers isn't that we do too little of it, but that we've misunderstood what it's for? The answer lives in an unlikely place for a clinical field: behavioral economics.
Hows & Whys
The de-skilling threat is real and asymmetric across specialties. Palliative care sits on the protected side of that asymmetry—because the highest-value things we do are the things machines are worst at.
Communication Skills
Every team thinks they’re compassionate. Fewer can name the cliffs embedded in compassion—and fewer still can stop one another from going over the edge in the middle of a messy consult.
Health Policy
💡Start with Rachel Cohen Booth's excellent article in Vox, What happens when a city takes women’s unpaid work seriously? It catalyzed my thoughts below. Hospice prides itself on dignity at the end of life. But what about dignity for those doing the hardest work—unpaid caregivers? If
Changing the World
In specialist palliative care, we talk about “compassion training” as if it’s a discrete skill you can add to a checklist. Joan Halifax’s enactive model challenges that notion: compassion isn’t a module; it emerges when attentional clarity, affective balance, ethical intention, and embodied engagement cohere in context.
Changing the World
Dr. Whyte's right—and in palliative care, the stakes are even higher.
Changing the World
If you’ve ever wondered why working in healthcare, especially in Specialist Palliative Care, feels like its being pulverized by grinding gears, this essay is for you.
Changing the World
Let’s stop pretending that our health system is anything other than a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from billing codes, productivity metrics, and cultural myths about heroism in medicine.