Dr. Maxxine Rattner is a hospice/palliative care clinician and educator. It was her own experiences as a front-line hospice social worker that inspired her to begin researching and writing about non-physical suffering. Her work seeks to create more space within palliative care literature and practice for the harder parts of living with, and dying from, a life-limiting illness. She recently completed her PhD on this topic, entitled, “Disrupting and expanding the discourse: Palliative care clinicians’ experiences with patients’ non-physical suffering”.

In this episode, we discuss the challenges in addressing non-physical suffering and the importance of making space within palliative care to do this intrinsically difficult work and approach the work without the expectation of “fixing” a patient’s or family’s suffering.

Resource links:

Increasing our understanding of nonphysical suffering within palliative care: A scoping review

August 2021

Palliative and Supportive Care 20(3):1-16

DOI:10.1017/S1478951521001127

Authors:

Maxxine Rattner