First: Twitter delivered a treasure this morning, from @abbrody (Ab Brody, an RN — and PhD — in San Francisco):
Wow,just wow! RT @DianeEMeier Pallimed:Post from husband of Dr. Pardi http://bit.ly/a3TH0X Do not miss this discussion! #hpm #palliative
What’s the big deal? Well, the New York Times ran a piece this week about Dr. Pardi, a palliative care doctor who fought it out against her cancer up to the end. The article was fascinating, disturbing, powerful, and we posted about it—and a related article we’d run in AJN not long ago—at this blog a few days ago.
What Brody’s Twitter message alerts us to today is an ensuing post and discussion at the palliative care blog Pallimed. The discussion has none of the harshness of tone one sometimes gets on Web discussions. Many of the people in the palliative care community seem to know each other, which always helps keep things civil (you don’t typically insult people you’re likely to meet in person).
A big question in the discussion is whether the Times story oversimplified the issues, creating an “either/or” scenario out of something much more complex, and in the process made palliative care look like it’s all about convincing people to give up and die. But it really gets interesting when Dr. Pardi’s husband pops up in the comments section and attempts to clarify some of the questions and misperceptions raised by the Times story. You’ll have to scroll down below the Pallimed post to find it, but it’s well worth it.
Also this week, on the nursosphere: JParadisi has a thoughtful post that points out a certain jarring feeling she sometimes experiences when shifting between her work as a nurse and her work as an artist. Read it for the great list of things she did this week. And Change of Shift, the “nursing blog carnival,” went up on April Fool’s Day at the ambitiously named Millionaire Nurse Blog. It’s always worth a read.
Many blogs by nurses flower quickly and fade fast (several of the blogs on our blogroll have been silent for quite some time). Others pop up to take their places. Some endure, grow, prosper. Ecologists may soon undertake a study, but in the meantime A Nurse Practitioner’s View draws our attention to a few new or newish blogs by NPs and PAs. May they prosper. –Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor
Thanks for the mention of JParadisi RN’s Blog. It’s always appreciated.
“there is a difference between extending life and extending death”
Thanks for the mention of “Change of Shift”. Stop by when you have a chance.
Thanks for posting about the NYT piece on palliative care and Rob’s comment. I am glad you talled about how you found out about it because I think that is an important part of the story too. Without strong blogs and networks of nursing and medical professioanls sharing and talking publicly, this story could easily be relegated to lota of dead end email conversations stuck in inboxes.