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Doctors and End-of-Life Discussions is a video (8:33min) produced by PBS. The resource is an overview of the importance of providing patient-centered care around end-of-life care communication.

Any hospital patients who don’t express their end-of-life wishes sometimes receive aggressive treatments that even their doctors say they wouldn’t want for themselves. According to Dr. Phil Pizzo, dean emeritus of Stanford University School of Medicine, 80 to 95 percent of doctors say “they want to die outside the hospital. They want to die at home. They want to have their family around them. They don’t want to be on life support systems.” Yet most doctors never have honest end-of-life discussions with their patients. Dr. VJ Periyakoil, director of palliative care education and training at Stanford University School of Medicine, has created the Stanford Letter Project to help patients and families express for their doctors what matters most to them at the end of life.  

About organization: PBS is a membership organization that, in partnership with its member stations, serves the American public with programming and services of the highest quality, using media to educate, inspire, entertain and express a diversity of perspectives. PBS empowers individuals to achieve their potential and strengthen the social, democratic, and cultural health of the U.S.

Keywords: end-of-life care, patient-centered care, hospice, serious illness communication, pallative care