End of Life Resources

Intro:  Most of us fear our own death; it is part of the human experience. Various authors suggest that the desire to deny mortality is part of every physician's decision to enter the field of Medicine. When learning about taking care of the dying, we are often told to "confront our own mortality". However, asking people to suddenly confront their own mortality is a bit naïve. Young physicians may have no real context for this (unless they have had a near death experience). Confronting one's mortality typically means different things to different people and different things to the same person at various stages of life. Rather than making blanket statements about confronting mortality, it may be helpful to break it down into individual episodes, times when we feel particularly vulnerable, as windows to self-exploration.