Category: healthcare
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Why Palliative Care Needs to Be Different
Maura J. Lipp, MD I was recently asked to give a presentation on what makes Palliative Care a specialty and why our team needs to function differently than “traditional” medical care. Naturally, this is a topic that can lead down many rabbit holes, depending on how you would like to broach the subject. The list…
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ADVOCACY MATTERS
Maura J. Lipp, MD People say the word advocacy quite a bit, but what does it really mean? For physicians, we’re always advocating for our patients. Sometimes in ways you don’t even recognize. We advocate when we need to speak with insurers about what’s best for our patients, with every peer-to-peer call. During family meetings,…
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IT’S TIME TO CHANGE OUR THINKING
By Maura J Lipp, MD There is one phrase used frequently in medicine, much to my dismay that I wish we could veto. Full disclosure, the sentiment when said, isn’t coming from a bad place. In fact, it’s coming from a beautiful place, an empathetic place. That place inside us that reels against terrible things happening to…
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“You’re What Kind of Nurse Practitioner?”
By Mary Lauren Doggett, FNP Probably the number one question I get when I tell people I am a Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner, right after the polite smile and nod that tells me they have no idea what I just said, is “Soooo, what do you do, exactly?” (A close second to that is “How…
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Why Honesty Matters
Our Patients Should Demand This of Us, Even When it Hurts. By Maura J Lipp, MD One of the hardest things we do as physicians is deliver bad news. Getting it right is critical. This seems like an obvious statement, but there is more to it than what is apparent on the surface. While we’re…
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PIECES OF MY HEART
by Mary Lauren Doggett, FNP-C As a young woman in nursing school, not yet touched by the “real world” of nursing, I listened to a psychology professor tell my class a story that I’ve never fully appreciated until now. I want to share what I can remember of it here to set the context for…
Palliative Life 