Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life – Daytime

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Join Valley Beit Midrash as we welcome Dr. Jessica Nutik Zitter for a thought provoking discussion on her latest book, Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life.

About the Author: Dr. Jessica Zitter, MD, MPH, is committed to changing the current paradigm of end-of-life medical decision-making. In today’s medical culture, the dying are often put on what she calls the “End-of-Life Conveyor Belt.” They are intubated, catheterized, and die attached to machines, frequently without even knowing they are dying.

In her work, Zitter builds bridges between patients and the healthcare team, striving to offer care aligned with each patient’s values and preferences. She has come to see that patients empowered with knowledge can die well, even beautifully.

Dr. Zitter practices the unusual combination of Critical and Palliative Care medicine at Highland Hospital, a public hospital in Oakland, California. She 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 is also co-founder of Vital Decisions, a telephone-based counseling service for patients with life-limiting illness.

Dr. Zitter is the author of the new book, Extreme Measures – Finding a Better Path to the End of Life, to be published by Penguin Random House in February 2017. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times on these issues, and her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Huffington Post, Pacific Standard, and JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association. She is featured in the short documentary Extremis, which won top honors at the Tribeca and San Francisco International Film Festivals and is now streaming on Netflix.

She lives in Oakland with her husband, three children, and two dogs.

About the Book: Extreme Measures charts Zitter’s journey from wanting to be one kind of hero to becoming another—a doctor who prioritizes the patient’s values and preferences in an environment where the default choice is the extreme use of technology. In our current medical culture, the old and the ill are put on what she terms the End-of-Life Conveyor belt. They are intubated, catheterized, and even shelved away in care facilities to suffer their final days alone, confused, and often in pain. In her work Zitter has learned what patients fear more than death itself: the prospect of dying badly. She builds bridges between patients and caregivers, formulates plans to allay patients’ pain and anxiety, and enlists the support of loved ones so that life can end well, even beautifully.

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