Click to listen article by Ariella Markowitz Dr. Jessica Zitter specializes in critical and palliative care medicine and practices at Highland Hospital in Oakland, where she helps people with serious illness talk about how they want to live, all the way to the end. Zitter says those are conversations we all should be having with our loved ones [...]
Dr. Zitter talks on NPR's Life Kit podcast about the importance of Advance Care Planning. Click to listen
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 to know, should he take him to the hospital? My typical response in this case — sudden illness in an otherwise healthy person — would [...]
Dr. Jessica Zitter, a critical and palliative care specialist takes listener questions about advanced directives that doctors follow in critical situations. Click to listen
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, acknowledging the insanity and underlying terror of these unprecedented circumstances. We joked about how our anxious mothers, with their endless reminders of dressing warm and [...]
Click to listen When Dr. Steve Pantilat asks his patients what they want most at the end of life, the answer is almost always the same: To be comfortable and surrounded by people they love. “I've been in rooms where there are 35 family members, people are playing music and holding a vigil, saying prayers and singing,” said Pantilat, [...]
Click to listen When Grace Taylor was in her first year of medical school, she took an ethics class with this hypothetical: You have two ventilators and three patients who need them. Who gets one? “I remember thinking that was a classroom situation that would never come up in the real world,” says Taylor, who is now a third-year [...]
“Extremis” is a powerful tool for both personal reflection and cultural transformation. Organizations across the country have invited Dr. Zitter to introduce the film and follow the screening with a Q and A. These events invite the audience, whether patients, physicians, families, or healthcare professionals, to take a step back and ask: What do we really want for ourselves, our [...]
Extreme Measures: Finding A Better Path to the End of Life is a powerful tool for changing the way we die. Individuals and organizations across the globe have used the book to take a step back and ask: When death comes, what do we really want for ourselves, our loved ones, and our patients? It is our hope that [...]
Medically reviewed by Timothy J. Legg, PhD, PsyD, Written by Jennifer Thomas and Juli Fraga Source: Healthline "Death, as the old adage goes, is one of only two certainties in life (the second being taxes). But when it comes to what actually kills us, are we really correct in our assumptions? As it turns out, no."(...) Read Full Publication Here [...]
