#39: Dr. Scott Schmidt - Navigating the Inevitable

Episode Summary: Dr. Scott Schmidt joins the podcast to share his knowledge about caring for those with serious illness and those who are in the dying process. As a medical doctor with an expansive background in Emergency Medicine, Hospice Care, and now as a leader in the Primary Palliative Care field, Scott invites us to consider how we go about the realities that surround end-of-life. Along the way, we get a solid sense of what kind of attitudes, questions, and conversations are needed from both sides of the medical encounter. But don’t be fooled, this episode has teachings for the healthy as much as for those with serious health challenges. In considering the inevitable fate of all bodies, Dr. Schmidt shows us how we can be more prepared and receptive to our individual impermanence at any point in our lives. Indeed, we come to see how forethought can help us be present and feel less overwhelmed in more trying times. Further on in the podcast, we learn how Scott’s encounters with live-saving measures and his natural inclination toward helping those facing illness and death pushed him forward to being a leader in the Primary Palliative Care approach. Towards the end of the show, we get a very real glimpse into the difficulty of modern medicine, with its messy and often morally distressing dilemmas. With depth and humility in the face of the unknowable, this conversation is a remarkable one for both the significances that occur in the latter stages of life, and also with the genuine soulfulness Dr. Schmidt brings to these moving encounters. As he says, navigating serious illness and the inevitability of death is no simple thing. About Dr. Scott Schmidt: Scott Schmidt is an Emergency Medicine doctor and cultural change leader who is charged with developing Primary Palliative Care competencies. About Primary Palliative Care: is a subspecialty of medicine, that seeks to plan and address serious illness situations with an orientation to minimize suffering while tending to the whole person. Considered an upstream evolution from Palliative Care, Primary Palliative Care seeks to support Palliative Care competencies in all providers and teams.