Co-authored and Co-edited by Ira Byock – primarily for Clinicians and Academics
Palliative and End-of-Life Pearls
Co-authored with John E.Heffner, MD, Hanley and Belfus, Inc., 2002
This addition to the popular Pearls Series® presents 71 case presentations of clinical interest related to end-of-life and palliative care for both hospitalized patients and patients receiving home care. The patient vignettes highlight considerations of pain and symptom management at the end of life, ethical issues related to life-supportive care, and approaches to assisting patients and families with the difficulties that surround death and dying.
A Few Months to Live: Different Paths to Life’s End
Co-authored with Jana Staton and Roger Shuy, Georgetown University Press, 2001
A Few Months to Live describes what dying is like from the perspectives of nine terminally ill individuals and their caregivers. Documenting a unique study of end-of-life experiences that included detailed conversations in home care settings, the book focuses on how participants lived their daily lives, understood their illnesses, coped with symptoms-especially pain-and searched for meaning or spiritual growth in their final months of life. The accounts are presented largely in the participants’ own words, illuminating both the medical and non-medical challenges that arose from the time each learned the “bad news” through their final days of life and memorial services.