Episode Details

Death Doulas and Hospice Nurses Talk Caregiving Community and Conscious Dying with Trish Rux and Jan Booth

Episode 174 Published 1 month, 1 week ago

Description

In this episode of Seeing Death Clearly, I’m joined by hospice nurses and end-of-life doulas Jan Booth and Trish Rux, authors of Dying Matters: Eight Conversations That Can Change Your Life.

We talk about why conversations about serious illness, caregiving, and end-of-life wishes need to begin long before a crisis. Through their years of hospice and palliative care experience, Jan and Trish have seen how often families find themselves making difficult decisions without having talked about what matters most to the person they love.

We explore why end-of-life planning is about much more than completing an advance directive. It’s also about understanding our values, thinking about who will care for us, talking honestly with the people in our lives, and building the support we may need as circumstances change.

Jan and Trish also share how their experiences as nurses led them into death doula work and why doulas can be valuable guides during serious illness, not only during the final days of life. We talk about the continued confusion surrounding hospice and death doula care and why, even after decades of hospice, our culture still struggles to talk openly about dying.

A big part of our conversation centers on community and caregiving. We discuss how isolated caregiving can become and what it might look like to rebuild circles of support around people who are seriously ill and their caregivers. We talk about practical approaches such as Share the Care, along with my own experience helping organize around-the-clock community support for someone who was dying.

And, as so often happens on this podcast, a conversation about death becomes a conversation about life. Jan, Trish, and I talk about how facing our mortality can help us become clearer about what matters, strengthen our relationships, express gratitude and forgiveness, and have important conversations while we still have the opportunity to have them.

Their book, Dying Matters, offers eight practical, heart-centered conversations designed to help individuals, families, caregivers, and communities begin talking about serious illness, caregiving, grief, loss, legacy, and the end of life before a crisis forces those conversations to happen.

00:00 Life Skills for Dying

00:19 Meet the Guests

01:39 Jan’s Hospice Journey

03:38 Trish’s Parallel Path

04:17 Why Change Is Slow

08:28 Beyond Advance Directives

10:26 Serious Illness Doula Role

14:01 Rebuilding Care Communities

16:30 Care Circle in Practice

23:35 Share the Care Model

25:10 Why Community Is Hard

32:13 Book and Discussion Guide