By Jessica Zitter I received an uncharacteristically anxious text from my friend Aileen: “I am having an emergency with my Mom. Please call ASAP.” When I last talked to Aileen, her mother’s dementia had been worsening slowly. A little more confusion, a stovetop left burning after cooking a meal. But now, her mother was significantly more agitated and paranoid—pacing the [...]
More and more Americans are choosing to die at home in the care of a loved one. But who takes care of the caregiver? In this episode, Emily talks to Jessica Zitter, a critical care and palliative care medicine doctor who also makes her directorial debut with the short film Caregiver: a love story. Hosted by Emily Silverman. Produced by [...]
Jessica Zitter in discussion with Meredith Goldstein of the Boston Globe about Caregiver: A Love Story Click to listen
By Jessica Zitter It took me a while to notice the hummingbird. She must have flown by my window 5 or 6 times before registering in my peripheral vision. When I finally looked up, I saw her standing on a tiny branch of the Monterey Pine outside our second-floor home-office window, a mere 3 feet from my desk. She [...]
After 'Caregiver: A Love Story' wrapped in March 2020, Dr. Jessica Zitter — who co-directed the short with Kevin Gordon — the world "shut down" and the duo feared the work would never see the light of day. In March 2020, a documentary short I co-directed with filmmaker Kevin Gordon, Caregiver: A Love Story, wrapped. But all of our plans — [...]
Click to listen Many of us in geriatrics and palliative care assume that we are the experts in health care when it comes to understanding the caregiver experience. Every once in a while, we are humbled and reminded of what we don’t know. Jessica Zitter had such an experience. Jessica, as many of you know, is an award winning [...]
Click to watch DR. JESSICA ZITTER: FILM SCREENING AND DISCUSSION, "CAREGIVER: A LOVE STORY" Dr. Jessica Zitter is a national advocate for transforming the way people die in America. She is Harvard- and UCSF-trained to practice the unusual combination of critical and palliative care medicine and works as an attending physician at a public hospital in Oakland. Join us [...]
Hosted by Mina Kim About one fifth of adults in the U.S are taking care of a family member or friend who needs help. The unpaid work of caring for loved ones who are aging, sick or disabled is often rewarding but it can also be exhausting, stressful and it can take a toll on the caregiver’s mental health. These [...]
Dr. Jessica Zitter Published in STAT “Why do they have that cold steel on my son’s ankle?” The father of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was newly paralyzed from the waist down, wanted to know why his son was shackled to his hospital bed. Jacob Blake had been shot in the back seven times by police in Kenosha, Wis., [...]
Dr. Jessica Zitter Published in The New York Times In March 2019, a robot entered a patient’s room in California and a doctor on its screen told him and his granddaughter that he was dying. This experience, posted to the granddaughter’s Facebook page, was treated as a scandal. Newscasters questioned the humanity of a health care system that would do [...]
