This recorded webinar was presented by award-winning journalist and bestselling author Katy Butler. In this presentation she discusses her research and findings about the step by step preparations – practical, communal, physical, medical, and spiritual – that make a good decline and a “good death” more likely.

Fee*: $39.00 for CMCs (with code) | $59.00 for non-CMCs
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Goals and Learning Objectives

The goals of this webinar are:

  • To name and describe the landscape of chronic illness, aging and decline in ways that support clients in successfully navigating predictable changes in health status.
  • To provide a developmental “map” of future health trajectories in order to clarify goals and access medical care within fragmented health systems that are appropriate to the life goals and wishes of clients.
  • To help clients negotiate decline and disability as whole persons rather than see themselves, or be seen, as bundles of diagnoses.

After this presentation, attendees will be able to:

  • Describe the concept of the “Grey Zone,” as described by the speaker, in practical language easily understood by lay people.
  • Describe how the speaker’s concept of the Grey Zone relates to traditional clinical conceptions of aging, serious illness, terminal disease, and frailty.
  • To name, in “kitchen table language,” easily understood by patients and families, three of the seven distinct health stages often experienced by people in aging and/or serious illness.
  • Describe opportunities for shifts in goals of care and expectations of medicine at each of the health stages, again in “kitchen table language.”
  • Describe three ways to help patients speak honestly to medical providers, and to help medical providers speak effectively with patients.
  • Name a new tool to help patients understand where they stand in the trajectory of serious, chronic, or terminal illness, discover what matters to them, and to help them prepare for a better end of life.

About the Presenter

Science journalist Katy Butler is the author of two critically acclaimed reflections on aging, serious illness, and the “good death”: Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death and The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life.

A dynamic public speaker and deep researcher who served as a long-term family caregiver for her own aging parents, she has spoken eloquently before more than 100 professional conferences and community groups.

“Knocking on Heaven’s Door, a New York Times bestseller, was named one of the ten best memoirs of the year 2013 by Publishers Weekly and a “Notable Book of the Year” by the NY Times, the SF Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. The Art of Dying Well drew huge crowds to bookstores across the country and remains high on the Amazon best seller list in Hospice and related categories.

She is one of relatively few non-physicians to give “Grand Rounds” and endowed lectures at leading medical centers, including Harvard Medical School, Mt. Sinai in New York, Cedars-Sinai in LA, UCSF, the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis, and Kaiser-Permanente northern California. She has appeared on scores of public television and radio programs, including Melissa Harris Perry (MSNBC) and Diane Rehm (NPR).

Katy has been interviewed by The New York Times, the Boston Globe, and numerous other publications. She has written for the NYTimes, JAMA-Internal Medicine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Scientific American. Her work has earned the Science in Society Prize from the National Association of Science Writers, a Books for a Better Life award, and inclusion in Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, and Best Buddhist Writing. She is a past finalist for a National Magazine Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Continuing Education Information

Upon purchase, staff will send details for obtaining a CE certificate. This presentation has been approved for 1 continuing education contact hour by NACCM. It is the responsibility of the participant to follow the steps to obtain the CEs.


Cancellation Policy

The registration/purchase fee for webinars is non-refundable.