Pediatric palliative care doctor and fellowship director. I help people talk about hard things. Views are my own. My videos and writing on website below. he/him
Sep 19, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Seeing the country ready to move on from #COVID is leading me to reflect on my own experience.
As a pediatrician, I know I haven’t seen nearly the devastation that my colleagues in adult medicine have.
As a pediatric palliative care doctor, I’ve seen enough.
🧵 1/7
I’ve seen children die from #COVID and, to me, one preventable child death is too many.
If you’re wondering, “Did they have underlying illnesses?” ask yourself why you’re asking that, and why it should matter
2/7
Sep 9, 2020 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
Once again the conversation has started about whether we should change the name “palliative care.”
I appreciate the rationale including points made in a recent @washingtonpost article.
Allow me to present a counterpoint.
A 🧵, with videos:
#hapc#pedpc#MedEd#scicomm
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Yes, fear of palliative care comes from an association in some people’s minds with death.
As many including @SoniaMKhunkhun@anandiyermd@ctsinclair have pointed out, that is likely a failure of education and due to a cultural fear of death itself, not palliative care.
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Aug 15, 2020 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
📣 Thrilled to share our publication!
Our first case series of Dignity Therapy modified for the pediatric #PalliativeCare population.
Thankful to have had @TXgriefgirl as an amazing partner in this work.
A #medthread#tweetorial on assessing goals of care. People often say “tell me your goals” and are confused when the response is “get better and go home” and conversation over.
First, until patients have been given reason to consider a goal beyond this (new bad news, disease progression, etc.), there probably isn’t any reason for a person to feel the need to reasses their own goals.
