Stories Have The Power to Transform End-of-Life Care
As an ICU and Palliative Care physician, Dr. Zitter’s writing offers an insider’s perspective on the public health crisis that touches us all: people dying badly.
Dr. Zitter is a regular contributor to The New York Times and The Huffington Post, and her writing also has appeared in The Atlantic, Time, Journal of the American Medical Association, and many other media.
She is the author of the newly released Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life, which serves as a practical guide for engaging in the radical honesty, authentic communication, and vibrant collaboration needed to improve end-of-life care for all.
Selected Articles
Most Recent Articles
Coronavirus Experience Shows The Limits of Hospital Care
My friend Jim called me with urgency in his voice; his elderly father, living alone in New York City during the peak of the pandemic, had a multiday fever and was losing weight. He wanted [...]
Covid or No Covid, It’s Important to Plan
By Jessica Nutik Zitter, M.D. April 16, 2020 My phone rang with a FaceTime video, and my cousin’s face popped into view. We spent the first few minutes expressing our mutual disbelief and shock over Covid-19, [...]
The Never-Ending Mistreatment of Black Patients
My patient would never breathe on his own again, but he didn’t know it yet. Years of smoking landed him in our emergency room several times a month. Now the only thing lying between him and [...]
How Storytelling Can Help Young Doctors Become More Resilient
Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH Harvard Business Review I recently stood in front of a group of emergency room residents at my hospital and asked an unusual question. “Has any of you ever judged [...]
What’s ignored in the debate over aid in dying
This undated photo provided by the Maynard family shows Brittany Maynard. The terminally ill California woman moved to Portland, Ore., to take advantage of Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, which was established in the [...]
Hard Cases: Autonomy Run Amok
Dr. Jessica Zitter LinkedIn Healthcare Channel – Hard Cases The patient in ICU bed 13 had been receiving progressively invasive treatments for an incurable disease. She was in her early 30s, and the medics found [...]
Hard Cases: Locked-In & Shut Out
Dr. Jessica Zitter LinkedIn Healthcare Channel - Hard Cases The woman was 47 years old and had suffered a devastating stroke three and a half weeks prior. It was the type of stroke [...]
5 Things I’ve Learned from Caring for the Dying
Dr. Jessica Zitter LinkedIn Healthcare Channel I have been a critical care physician for over twenty years. Over that time, I have cared for thousands of patients. Some I have saved, and celebrated [...]
When Grief Gets Complicated
Dr. Jessica Zitter Psychology Today Linda was a friend of a friend. As a doctor who practices both critical and palliative care medicine, I am frequently invited into the lives of people I may not [...]
How the Rise of Medical Technology is Worsening Death
Dr. Jessiza Nutik Zitter Health Affairs Our aging population is at risk from a most benign-appearing source—the medical technologies we trust to keep us healthy. When they were first widely used in the [...]
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If so, you’ll enjoy her newly released book, Extreme Measures. It weaves patient stories into the fabric of a broader perspective: the social, societal, and psychological factors of how end-of-life plays out in our current medical culture.