This Nursing Professor Is On a Quest to Improve End-of-Life Care, Worldwide | The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying

University of Virginia nursing professor Cathy Campbell talks about how end of life care is improving:

There was always this great tension between compassionate care and the cure, the cure, the cure,” said Campbell, recollecting her early years as a nurse in a Florida Veterans Administration hospital, “and at that point palliative care wasn’t very good, and the things we did to patients weren’t very good for them, either.” 

While the memories still smart, Campbell’s relieved when she considers the expanse of modern palliative care, and the growing understanding that “there is such a thing as a good death.” 

But drugs and technologies aside, palliative care remains rooted in compassionate presence. That might mean that light chit-chat, passing ice to the bedridden, or quietly holding a griever’s hand. It also might mean answering loved ones’ frank and probing questions – 

What does death look like? How do you know if he’s in pain? Does she know we’re here at all? – or recommending medication adjustments for pain, based upon observed distress. Many times, though, Campbell’s just there, palms up, offering herself as a witness and a comfort.

This Nursing Professor Is On a Quest to Improve End-of-Life Care, Worldwide | The Amateur's Guide To Death & Dying: