Hospice at the Oscars: Viva Editions Authors Discuss Hospice Care in an Unlikely Place
(PRWEB) February 28, 2014 -- In their ongoing blog on Psychology Today, authors and journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel feature various topics on hospice and end-of-life care, based on their award-winning book Changing the Way We Die: Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement. In the most recent article, the authors write about three things that are no often discussed together: hospice, prisons, and the Oscars.
The article is about the documentary Prison Terminal, which is up for an Oscar this weekend. The unusual thing about the hospice in the documentary is that the hospice volunteers are other inmates. "Like other hospices, the prison hospice uses a team approach, with doctors and nurses, but the hands-on caregivers are kidnappers and murderers who have gone through a 14-week training program. Often these volunteers are the only visitors, and the only one with the patient when he dies."
Sheila Himmel highly recommends the documentary, and finishes with this review, "Think you don’t care about prisoners and prisons aren’t your problem? Prison Terminal is mind-bending."
Changing the Way We Die:
Compassionate End-of-Life Care and the Hospice Movement
By Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel
Once viewed with suspicion as a New Age indulgence or fringe religious practice, hospice has become a $14 billion-a-year business and arguably the most successful segment of health care in America. In Changing the Way We Die, award-winning journalists Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel investigate what hospice means to today’s aging population and their families. It’s the first book to take a sweeping look at the hospice landscape, reporting the stories of patients, caregivers and cutting-edge researchers, as well as the corporate giants that increasingly own this market.
Join Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel at these upcoming events:
3/15: Barnes and Noble Yonkers, NY
3/16: [words], Maplewood, NJ
3/18: Bluestockings, New York, NY
3/19: Namaste, New York, NY
3/20: New York Zen Center, New York, NY
4/16: Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
4/17: The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, CA
Brenda Knight, Cleis Press, INC, http://www.vivaeditions.com, +1 510-845-8000, [email protected]
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