Harvey Max Chochinov is a psychiatrist.

The Platinum Rule in health care: Moving beyond the Golden Rule

Conditions
March 7, 2026

An excerpt from In Search of Dignity: A Lifetime of Reflections.

Several years before her death at the age of 55 years due to complications of cerebral palsy, my sister Ellen was again in hospital, this time in intensive care and on the brink of respiratory collapse. To say cerebral palsy had shaped her life is an understatement, in that it molded nearly every facet of her being, from the …

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The Platinum Rule in health care: Moving beyond the Golden Rule

Intensive caring: Reminding patients they matter

Physician
November 28, 2023

Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement and palliative care, famously said, “You matter because you are you, and you matter to the last moment of your life.” This quote has become the central philosophical tenet of palliative care. It implores us to remind patients, who may be feeling helpless, hopeless, or worthless, that they matter. There is abundant evidence that patients approaching death are susceptible to …

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Intensive caring: Reminding patients they matter

Michael J. Fox asks: “Am I still me?” in a new documentary – a question many with critical illness face

Conditions
August 19, 2023

Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie was recently released by Apple TV+ and provides a ringside seat to the daily, formidable challenges facing the actor since he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease more than 30 years ago.

There is, of course, tremendous irony in this movie’s title, given Parkinson’s disease, a non-curable neurodegenerative disease that affects well over six million people around the world, denies those afflicted the ability to keep …

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Michael J. Fox asks: “Am I still me?” in a new documentary – a question many with critical illness face

Overcoming the lies of depression: Senator John Fetterman’s struggle with mental health

Conditions
June 5, 2023

In February, just a few months after being elected to the United States Senate, Pennsylvania politician John Fetterman entered into a treatment program for depression. In an interview with CBS News show Sunday Morning last month, he recounted suffering a stroke in May 2022, then fighting through a grueling Senate race that severely impacted his mental health. “You may have won,” he recalled thinking, “but depression can absolutely convince you …

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Overcoming the lies of depression: Senator John Fetterman’s struggle with mental health

Why is being a patient a difficult pill to swallow?

Physician
May 20, 2023

While being treated for an aggressive hematologic cancer, the former head of a department of medicine at a large teaching hospital told me he wished he could hang a sign on his headboard, reading P-I-P: Previously-Important-Person. Despite extraordinary achievements, skills, credentials, and status, being a patient made him feel like an amalgam of parts; limbs, bodily fluids, organs, and orifices, all now suspect, some more wayward than others — and …

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Why is being a patient a difficult pill to swallow?

Not acknowledging death does not make it go away

Physician
May 31, 2014

The last time I was in Israel, I went on some home visits with a palliative care physician in the town of Sfat near the Sea of Galilee. My colleague, a devout Jewish doctor, took me to several homes to offer advice on managing his most serious, terminally ill patients. One older Chassidic Rabbi was dealing with an advanced lung cancer, and having a difficult time accepting any kind of …

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Not acknowledging death does not make it go away