Prelude: How to Read This History

Partnering with Hospice & Palliative Care Today, we marked the 250th anniversary of the United States by tracing a different kind of history: how people in this country have responded to suffering. Across epidemics and wars, plantations and prisons, almshouses and hospitals, homes and hospice beds, this is the story of imperfect people learning to see suffering more clearly and choosing how it will be met in a nation “dedicated to the proposition” that all “are created equal.”

This project is for all who shape the care of people facing serious illness, dying, and grief, with a focus for hospice and palliative care leaders, clinicians, and educators. Its concise segments can be read straight through, used more strategically in discussions, brought into staff education, or opened by era when a particular challenge calls for deeper historical perspective. Most any challenge we face today was confronted–and responded to (or not)–by previous generations, simply in different contexts. What can we learn from others? How can we refrain from repeating ill-will and intentionally improve care with clarity and courage?

The grouped decades on these pages move through:

Read these pages to follow the long arc decade by decade, or return to smaller entries when your organization is wrestling with access, ethics, grief, new technology, workforce strain, or the meaning of presence. Use these segments in meetings, orientation, strategic planning, classroom discussions, or community education as a way to better understand challenges we face today. The choices we make today matter.

“Oh, say can we see” more clearly what this history reveals? The question is not only what happened before us, but what we are being called to notice, to honor, and to carry forward today and through tomorrow.

~ Joy S. Berger, DMA, FT, BCC, MT-BC