Hows & Whys
AI Won't De-Skill Palliative Care
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.
Systems Thinking
Be the gears, not the gristle.
Palliative Care
What Physicians Are (Actually) For On Specialist Palliative Care Teams
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,
Health Policy
Hospice Is Buckling Under Structural Choices We Made
Hospice isn’t failing because clinicians forgot how to care. It’s failing because we built a structure that funds poorly, measures the wrong things, and aims enforcement in ways that often miss the mark.
Health Policy
Hospice Caregiver Burden and the Systematic Delegitimization of Care
💡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
Opinion
Did Palliative Care Spend a Decade on the Wrong Problem?
I think this might be true, but I invite your commentary and reactions: The move toward “everyone with serious illness needs specialist palliative care” consumed a decade of oxygen and money while the harder, more consequential work—how to pay for specialist, team-based palliative care as defined by NQF/
Changing the World
Death, Creativity, and Compassion: What Are We Really Training For?
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
Augmented Intelligence in Palliative Care—Redesigning Care Delivery
Dr. Whyte's right—and in palliative care, the stakes are even higher.
Changing the World
Compassion on Clearance: Why Palliative Values Always Seem to End Up Out of Stock
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
The Monster We Built—and How Palliative Care Can Slay It
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
What Kyle Learned Recently
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.