How we die is just as important as how we live—it is still part of a lived experience. What do we need to consider when contemplating our own death and the death of loved ones? This session examines potential pathways for reimagining a healthcare system that embraces mortality with empathy, grace, and a willingness to step away from a paradigm of extreme measures. How might we naturalize dying as a normal part of a patient’s life in a healthcare context? Within this reimagining, what might arise in terms of improved, perhaps more meaningful, patient, family, and provider experiences?

Dr. Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH practices the unusual combination of Critical and Palliative Care medicine at Highland Hospital, the public hospital in Oakland, California. She uses storytelling to examine the overmedicalization of death in America. Her essays appear in her book, Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life, as well as The New York Times and other publications. Over the past 5 years she has turned to filmmaking to draw audiences into this important conversation. Her films include the Oscar-nominated Extremis (Netflix) and Caregiver: A Love Story. She is at work on her third film, The Chaplain of Oakland, which examines the crisis of racial healthcare inequities at the end of life. In 2021, she founded a nonprofit organization, Reel Medicine Media, to maximize impact with her films through organizational partnerships, curriculum generation, and public speaking. Dr. Zitter attended Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University Medical School and earned her Masters in Public Health from University of California, Berkeley. Her medical training includes an Internal Medicine residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a fellowship in Pulmonary/Critical Care at the University of California, San Francisco. She also is co-founder of Vital Decisions, a telephone-based counseling service for patients with life-limiting illness.