Specialist palliative care is harder than you think.
Palliative Care
If you think the physician on a Specialist Palliative Care team is the captain, you’ve already missed the plot. Our role is counter‑cultural: we make space, translate, and selectively intervene—then get out of the way. That’s how teams deliver the outcomes the literature promises. Why teams,
Teaching Pearl
Welcome back to Rounds & Rants, where we tackle the myths, misunderstandings, and maddening habits that make living harder than it needs to be. For today’s topic I thought I'd bring us back from the clouds where I lived for the first few points and talk about
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.
Communication Skills
From time-to-time, I will publish articles that have recently crossed my path with my analysis of what they tell us. This will be the first in that series.
Hows & Whys
Why listen to me? Because I’m not here to sell platitudes. I’m here to share the soapboxes I stand on every day, bust the myths that make care worse, and offer the kind of practical wisdom you only get when you’ve sat at the bedside for thousands of hours.
Hows & Whys
If you want evidence-driven insights, humor, and the occasional rant that makes you rethink how we care for people when it matters most, welcome aboard.