Finish Strong: Putting YOUR Priorities First at Life ’s End

Barbara Coombs Lee, an ER and ICU nurse and physician assistant for 25 years, has written a critically acclaimed, groundbreaking book about how to live strong to the end. Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at Life’s End is based on her decades as a clinician, caring for dying patients who suffered needlessly, and decades more as an advocate, empowering people to avoid that fate. Its recommendations come with both the authority of knowledge and experience, and the compassion of one who knows firsthand how challenging the end-of-life journey can be. “As baby boomers moved through significant life stages, we changed every one. Dying will be no different,” writes Coombs Lee, a baby boomer herself, born in 1947.  “This book … promotes a brave new model of medical decision-making. It supports candor, curiosity and individual agency. It offers alternatives to the conveyor-belt approach of automatic, futile and burdensome over-treatment ... Americans’ blind faith in medical authority … is about to undergo a sea change. The purpose of this book is to help people navigate and implement that change.”The usual advice about advance directives and conversations is important but woefully inadequate. This book describes concrete action in the here and now to help live our best lives to the end. “Finish Strong is the kind of book that comes along once in a generation, and Barbara Coombs Lee is nothing short of a hi...
Source: blog.bioethics.net - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Tags: Health Care syndicated Source Type: blogs