September 12, 2024
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In this premium episode for paying subscribers, I welcome back writer and physician Dr. Sunita Puri, a palliative care specialist who writes with exquisite care and candor about end-of-life issues. Sunita was on the podcast a little over a year ago talking about the hidden harms of CPR, which she wrote about for The New Yorker. She’s back to talk about two articles she published this summer. One in The Atlantic about how doctors deal with terminal illness in younger patients and another in The Wall Street Journal about dying at home. We’ve been taught to assume that a good death means dying at home, or at least not in a hospital, but Sunita points out that this can be better in theory than in practice. This is another extraordinary conversation with one of listeners’ favorite guests.
Guest Bio
Dr. Sunita Puri is a palliative care physician and author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, a literary memoir recounting her journey to the practice of palliative care and what it means to help people find dignity, purpose, and comfort when facing serious illnesses and the end of life. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles times, Tricycle, The Wall Street Journal and Slate. This fall, she is joining the UC Irvine Medical Center faculty as the director of the inpatient palliative care service and associate professor of medicine. She was recently awarded a one-month Bogliasco fellowship for exceptional artists and has received writing residencies from Yaddo and MacDowell, among other places.
The Atlantic, The Silence Doctors Are Keeping About Millennial Deaths
The Wall Street Journal, Most People Are Dying At Home. Is That A Good Thing?
Sunita’s previous interview on The Unspeakable.
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