The chest pains—short, sharp, and frequent—had started in the early afternoon. I had been painting my children’s faces and pulling a picnic together at the home of my wife; we’re separated. When she appeared in the kitchen, I went home, shaved, changed into a skirt and blouse, rushed on some lipstick and foundation, and drove myself to the hospital.

At AllNurses.com: Can too much time be  spent on the resuscitation of a celebrity?

At NEJM: “some new hospice providers, which are predominantly for-profit, may be pursuing a business model based on maximizing length of stay, and thus profitability.”

At the NY Times, family caregiving on contract:

The elderly mother wanted to avoid a nursing home and remain in her house in Kansas City, but she needed hands-on help. The daughter, a nurse at a local hospital, was willing to shoulder responsibility for her mother’s care but couldn’t afford to lose income by substantially scaling back her work schedule.

So elder law attorney Craig Reaves drew up a care contract, specifying that the daughter would help her mother a certain number of hours each week and perform particular duties, for which her mother would pay the same hourly wage her daughter would have earned at the hospital. 

The disparities here in South Africa are tragic, given the mineral and monetary wealth of the country. One guide told me that the illiteracy and innumeracy rate of children in South Africa was almost 75%. The WHO reports that life expectancy at birth is 43 years for men and 45 for women. Mortality of children under five is twice as high for those with uneducated mothers than for those with highly educated mothers.

Doctors, nurses and pharmacists would be protected from penalties for refusing to provide health care on religious or moral grounds, under a bill sent to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s desk . . .