Angelo E. Volandes Books
Angelo E. Volandes, M.
Known for: The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Books by Angelo E. Volandes
The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
What if the most important medical decision of your life is not about choosing a treatment, but about deciding what kind of life you want to preserve when time is short? In The Conversation, physician Angelo E. Volandes argues that end-of-life care too often becomes a cascade of interventions driven by habit, fear, and medical momentum rather than by the patient’s own values. Through moving stories from hospitals, nursing homes, and family meetings, he shows how people frequently receive aggressive care they never would have chosen if someone had clearly explained the likely outcomes and asked what mattered most to them. Volandes writes with unusual authority. As a practicing doctor, researcher, and innovator in advance-care planning, he has spent years witnessing the gap between what medicine can do and what patients actually want. His work on communication tools, including video decision aids, gives the book both emotional depth and practical relevance. The result is a humane, accessible, and urgent guide to one of the hardest topics in medicine: how honest conversations can reduce suffering, protect dignity, and help families make decisions they can live with.
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Mrs. Jones and the Cost of Silence
A crisis often reveals what ordinary life allows us to postpone. Volandes opens with cases like that of Mrs. Jones, a woman devastated by a severe stroke, to show how quickly medical decisions can spiral when no one has discussed the patient’s wishes in advance. In the hospital, families are frighte...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Medicine Often Rewards Doing More
The culture of medicine is shaped by rescue. Doctors are trained to diagnose, intervene, and save lives, and those instincts are deeply honorable. Yet Volandes argues that this same culture can become dangerous at the end of life, where the line between healing and harming is often blurred. Hospital...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
The Right Conversation Changes Everything
The most compassionate medical tool may be a well-timed question. Volandes argues that end-of-life planning should not begin with forms, legal jargon, or checkboxes, but with a conversation about values. What makes life worth living for this person? What tradeoffs would they accept for more time? Wh...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Real Stories Reveal Hidden Medical Harm
Statistics can inform us, but stories often change us. Throughout the book, Volandes draws on experiences from his medical practice to show how end-of-life care unfolds in real life, not in policy debates or abstract ethics seminars. These stories reveal a recurring pattern: well-meaning clinicians ...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Advance Care Planning Means Knowing Yourself
Advance care planning is often misunderstood as paperwork completed near the end of life. Volandes reframes it as a process of self-knowledge translated into medical guidance. Living wills, health care proxies, and code-status forms matter, but they are only useful when grounded in thoughtful reflec...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
Seeing Care Options Makes Decisions Clearer
People cannot make informed choices about treatments they cannot realistically imagine. One of Volandes’s most distinctive contributions is his advocacy for video decision aids, tools that show patients and families what different medical conditions and interventions actually look like. Written desc...
From The Conversation: A Revolutionary Plan for End-of-Life Care
About Angelo E. Volandes
Angelo E. Volandes, M.D., M.P.H., is a physician and researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. His work focuses on improving communication between doctors and patients about end-of-life care and developing video decision aids to support informed medical choices.
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Angelo E. Volandes, M.
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