BJ Miller: Palliative medicine physician and educator on life and death and everything in between

The Art of Excellence

Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering, illness, and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level.

Some interesting insights from this episode:

· “I had a basic hunger and curiosity to understand the world in which I was living and to understand myself”.

· Early on, as he was recovering from the accident with three less limbs, he forced himself to reframe his situation. That life wasn’t going to be extra difficult going forward but just uniquely difficult. And that suffering is something we all deal with in our own way. Eventually his emotions would catch up with his mind whereby he truly felt that way.

· Studying art history in college taught him perspective. It taught him how he was in control as to how he perceived his life and how he framed his life experience.

· In palliative care, you don’t just treat the pain, you treat the suffering.

· “If you don’t know the depths of sorrow, you aren’t going to know the peaks of joy.”

· As dying patients reflect back upon their lives, it’s not so much regret over what decisions they made but how they imbued whatever decisions they made. Did they do it with love, did they infuse their spirit into whatever they were doing. That’s what matters most.

Notes:

The Center for Dying and Living

Book: A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death

TED Talk: What Really Matters at the End of Life