For four nights this fall, renowned journalists Bill and Judith Moyers may finally accomplish what end-of-life advocates have hoped for so long: thoughtful media coverage of issues surrounding end-of-life care in America. Moyers has a record for turning the camera’s eye onto subjects that capture the public interest: his series on addiction, Moyers on Addiction: Close to Home drew more than 112 million viewers. He hopes that the program now under production: Moyers on Dying: On Our Own Terms will reach millions of viewers - and mobilize communities to improve care of the dying.
“You never know if you’ll hit the Zeitgeist,” Moyers told a group gathered in Washington, D.C. “But this series can change the way people talk about death and dying.”
The program will air on PBS on September 10 to 13, 2000. Fifty consumer, health care and professional organizations have joined a national outreach campaign through which they will team up with public television stations in their own communities. These coalitions will address problems particular to their own areas.
Judith Moyers described television as a sort of national campfire around which Americans tell and hear stories (for and better worse, she added).
“Television is here today and gone tomorrow unless we give it legs, extending [a pro-gram] and giving it a long life,” she said. Through the extensive outreach program being developed nationwide, Judith Moyers believes the new program will have those legs - and that people will run with ideas.
Exchange readers and participants in Breakthrough Series sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Center to Improve Care of the Dying will encounter familiar faces and organizations. Among the featured programs are participants from the 1997-98 Breakthrough Series: Cooper Green Hospital’s Balm of Gilead Palliative Care Unit (Birmingham, AL) and Wishard Memorial Hospital (Indianapolis, IN), both public hospitals spurred to activity while involved in the Breakthrough Series. Others interviewed for the program include Diane Meier, M.D., head of the palliative care team at Mt. Sinai Medical Center (Exchange, June 1998), Frank Ostaseski, former head of the Zen Hospice Center (Exchange, February 1998), and Joanne Lynn, M.D., president of Americans for Better Care of the Dying.
Bill Moyers explained that, as it has in the past, his own family inspired the “seminal itch” for the show. In the uncanny way life has of imitating art, Moyers own mother died just as he was beginning to shoot interviews for the program. The initial idea, however, came from a conversation with his middle-aged adult children who expressed concerns about their parents’ aging.
“Since Adam and Eve, the death rate has remained the same, one for one,” Moyers commented. Most viewers will have experienced the death of a loved one - so the show may resonate with them.
Currently in the midst of editing the broadcast, Moyers said that he is most struck by the fact that every single patient he interviewed, except for one, has since died, an awareness that seems to have taken him by surprise.
“We’ve talked with the dying themselves, and they were all magnanimous about letting us into their lives at that point in time,” he said. “Just as each life is its own particular life, so too, each death is its own particular death.”
Moyers acknowledged that getting people to watch a program devoted to death and dying will not be easy - nor is the program easy to watch.
“It is not desirable, even if it were possible, to avoid ‘a lot of shit, piss and pain,’” he said. “But we can do better. I hope viewers come to understand that dying is not a failure of medicine, but a fact of life - and that we are learning to make it better.”
In one video clip, palliative care nurse specialist Edwina Taylor (Balm of Gilead) describes how things can be made better - even if slowly. She tells the story of a little boy who tries to rescue millions of starfish that have washed ashore during a storm. The boy picks one up, throws it back to sea, then throws another. An old man asks the boy why he is wasting his time. He cannot make a difference to all of them. The boy throws another starfish in and says, “Made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”
“Starfish savers” can learn more about the out-reach program by visiting the On Our Own Terms website at www.thirteen.org/onourownterms or www.pbs.org/onourownterms. Civic, community, consumer groups and individuals may contact Catherine Smith at Barksdale Ballard & Co. at 703.827.8771 or sending e-mail to her at csmith@ballard.com.
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