Literature Review

What physician mothers miss while caring for everyone elseKevinMD; by Loryn Kromrey; 10/7/26Medicine and motherhood were intertwined from the very beginning. My water broke while I was in the operating room with my first baby, and he was born just two hours later... As physician mothers, we spend so much of our lives taking care of other people’s families. As an anesthesiologist, I had the privilege of caring for children and adults during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. I found so much purpose in my work, and I took that responsibility seriously. But it also came with immense pressure and days that pushed me to my limits. Stepping away gave me the perspective to see how often my own children sometimes got what was left of me after I had spent the day taking care of everyone else. I don’t say that with guilt. It’s simply something I couldn’t see until life forced me to slow down.

Free webinar for physicians and healthcare professionals: Reducing hospital readmissions and reducing Hospital Readmissions and Length of stay in advanced illness patients VITAS Healthcare; Press Release; 9/14/26

BlackDoctor launches first-ever medical advisory board  BlackDoctor, Chicago, IL; Press Release by BlackDoctor; 10/1/26 BlackDoctor, the leading health and wellness platform for Black America, today announced its first Medical Advisory Board. The board brings together eight physicians from across the country. They will help inform the company’s product and content development strategy for clinicians, advance its health education efforts, help shape new products and tools and facilitate strategic engagements across the healthcare ecosystem. ...  It gives the company, which reaches 30 million people each year, a formal layer of clinical oversight from physicians who understand the challenges facing Black patients and clinicians with specialities spanning cardiovascular health, cancer, mental health, kidney disease, clinical trials, dermatology and vision care.

People say they want to die at home. I think about it differently. Guest essay International New York Times; by Daniela J. Lamas; 9/29/26What is a good death? We tend to imagine a good death as one that takes place at home, far from the sounds and smells and lines and tubes of an intensive care unit, like the one where I work. I believed this for many years. But after a decade as an I.C.U. doctor, I've come to think we need a different definition of a good death. A death at home can be the right thing for a patient and his or her family. But it is not inherently better. An I.C.U. death can be peaceful and dignified. A death at home can be panicked and painful. Yet we have built a culture, and quality metrics, that treat I.C.U. care at the end of life as a failure. ... "dying." But sometimes intensive care is the right place to care for a dying patient.

Dr. Martin McCormack: The healthcare leader connecting education, governance and a safer world Global Healthcare Magazine; September 2026 issue Long before he held a title [Chief Executive Officer of the College of Anaesthesiologists of Ireland], ... Dr. Martin McCormack sat with families in the hardest hours of their lives, [as a palliative care physician, trauma counselor with patients and families in intensive care, supervising a team of 36 medical social workers, developing bereavement services. ... He measures his own leadership less by what has been delivered in any one period than by the capability it leaves behind. ... Dr. McCormack has been asking some version of the same question that has remained consistent throughout his career: What does this person need from the system around them, and how do we build it so it holds?

NIH grant advances research on palliative care at home Indiana University School of Nursing; by Glenda Shaw; 9/23/26 ... A new research project led by Indiana University School of Nursing assistant professor Lyndsay DeGroot, PhD, RN, aims to bring palliative care directly to patients in their homes through a telephone-based program that could make supportive care more accessible for people living with serious chronic illness. To support this work, DeGroot has received a NIH-National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) five-year K23 Career Development Award totaling $916,000. The award will fund her project, “Implementing Community-Based Palliative Care for Adults with Heart Failure or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.”

At the bedside: clinician grief Core IM; podcast by Dr. Margot Hedlin, Dr. Danai Papadatou, Dr. Tamar Schiff and Dr. Jafar Al-Mondhiry; 9/8/26... "I can’t share his name, but I can tell you what he taught me about grief. I met this patient a few months after graduating from medical school, and by that point he was already dying. ... I grieved for this man the way I’ve grieved for many patients: I found a supply closet to cry in for a few minutes before my pager went off. But in the years since, years in which I worked at the epicenter of the COVID pandemic, worked nights at a cancer hospital, and suffered personal loss, I’ve found that grief is too large to be stuffed in a supply closet: when left unaddressed, it keeps coming back, in ways and places that I couldn’t predict."

Core addiction skills training in hospice and palliative medicine fellowships: A national survey addiction skills training in HPM fellowshipsJournal of Pain & Symptom Management; by J Janet Ho, Steven Z Pantilat, Julie W Childers; 8/26Hospice and palliative medicine (HPM) clinicians increasingly care for patients with serious illness and prolonged opioid exposure, yet often report limited training managing consequences like opioid misuse or opioid use disorder (OUD). PDs [program directors] perceived that fellows have low confidence with opioid misuse or OUD, despite commonly encountering such patients. Most programs offered limited training (2-3 hours), though many provided electives. Fewer than 20% of programs had faculty with formal addiction training, and 25% reported no faculty with buprenorphine experience. Conclusion: Despite broad recognition of the importance of core addiction skills, a shortage of faculty expertise constrains education in HPM physician fellowships.

Default hospice consultation in comfort measures orders and hospice engagementJAMA Network Open; by L. Scott Sussman, John M. Henderson, Nancy Kim; 8/26Hospice improves end-of-life care quality yet remains underutilized, with persistent racial and ethnic access disparities. In this quality improvement study, embedding hospice consultation within CMO [comfort measures only] orders was associated with substantial and sustained increases in hospice engagement. Because hospice enrollment cannot occur without consultation, improving consult reliability represents a meaningful intervention. This project embedded hospice consideration directly into an existing clinical transition rather than relying on interruptive alerts or educational efforts alone. These findings contribute to evidence that EHR [electronic health record]-based behavioral nudges can guide clinicians in time-sensitive, high-stakes settings.

When to reconsider artificial nutrition and hydration near the end of life South Hospital News and Healthcare Report; by Kamal Wahab, MD, HMDC; 9/24/26 Few end-of-life decisions generate more emotion and uncertainty than whether to continue or initiate artificial nutrition and hydration. Clinicians must balance the potential benefits of these interventions against the burdens while keeping the patient’s goals and quality of life at the center of the discussion. Hospice does not mean stopping treatment. Patients may continue treatments that relieve symptoms or improve quality of life. The guiding principle is whether the intervention is helping the patient achieve what matters most to them.

4 in 5 doctors now work for ‘corporate entities’ as autonomy erodes Forbes; by Bruce Japsen; 9/8/26 Corporate entities now employ 82% of U.S. physicians, a trend eroding doctor autonomy, according to a new Physicians Advocacy Institute report. The survey reveals nearly half of doctors feel pressured to prioritize patient volume over optimal care. Furthermore, 63% encounter corporate barriers to out-of-network referrals, and 59% feel compelled to keep patients within their health system. PAI's CEO, Kelly Kenney, asserts that corporate owners' primary allegiance is to profits, not patients, directly restricting physicians' ability to ensure the best care.

Palliative care conversations can enhance support for patients with advanced cancer Oncology Nurse Advisor; by Megan Garlapow, PhD; 9/22/26 Palliative care and hospice address different points along the trajectory of serious illness, and clinicians can improve patient and family understanding by clearly distinguishing the 2 services and using direct, supportive language, according to a presentation at ONS Bridge 2026 by Meg Krasne, MD, MPH, clinical expert and instructor at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. ... She described palliative care as a specialized medical discipline centered on symptom management, coping, and medical decision-making. Rather than representing a transition away from active treatment, palliative care can function as an additional layer of support throughout the course of serious illness.