Good end-of-life care manifests as the intensification of care that is, ideally, already in place; care that begins at birth and persists across time, diagnoses, and caregiver groups—from family and community support to medical, custodial, and supplementary care.

The widespread perception that Jewish law unequivocally demands that all measures must be taken to prolong the life of a dying patient, even if they will prolong dying or cause suffering, is incorrect.

Because physicians are the gatekeepers to end-of-life care services and their referral patterns vary, those patterns are worthy targets for intervention.

Situations in which the patient’s family seems not to be acting in good faith or the patient's suffering is uncontrollable are relatively rare and do not warrant giving physicians unilateral power to withhold or withdraw treatment in all cases of perceived medical futility.

A description of Stanford University School of Medicine's longitudinal approach to effective, skill-based palliative care instruction.

The Serious Illness Communication Checklist provides clinicians with a tool to facilitate discussions about end-of-life issues at the right time in the right way and document the vital information the discussion elicits.

The medical community should formulate guidelines for appropriate use of organ-replacement therapies, taking into consideration the resources involved and the clinical expectation that the therapy can serve as a bridge to recovery or transplantation or can be a destination therapy.

The belief persists that patient satisfaction surveys are more responsive to friendliness and expensive facilities than clinician interaction, but there is evidence to the contrary.

While proponents of direct-to-consumer drug advertising tout them as vehicles for patient empowerment, critics point to their influence on unsound prescribing and the medicalization of human experience.

For patients to adopt personal health records, they must be convinced of the value the technology has for them. Framing that value in a way that actively engages patients as collaborators in their health care management will not only empower the individual but improve patient-clinician relationships overall.