Learn how a “gap of care” exists for patients who have near-death experiences in the hospital that are not validated or believed.
My two guests, Heidi Walsh and Lilia Samoilo worked together on a project to gather stories of near-death experiencers and how they were perceived and treated by the healthcare system after their extraordinary NDE’s. Lilia is an NDE educator who herself has experienced multiple NDE’s and Heidi is the managing editor for Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research. They discuss the findings of the symposium they created and why more education about NDE’s is needed for healthcare practitioners.
Learn more about the symposium here.
This episode includes:
- The definition of a near-death experience
- Why patient stories are helpful in medicine and bioethics
- What is the “gap of care” for NDE patients in healthcare settings and how does it harm them
- Why this “gap of care” is a bioethical issue that should be addressed
- Statistics show that 20% of resuscitated patients have had an NDE but only 2% self-report the experience
- How to validate a patient’s experience even if you don’t believe it is possible
- How the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics Journal came to create a symposium on NDE’s
- Why combat veterans who have had NDE’s are harmed by lack of validation for their experience
- Why it is essential that medical providers be trained to recognize and have conversations about NDE’s in order to bridge the gap of care for patients
- How the NDE Symposium could be used for teaching purposes but first must be released to open access and how Heidi and Lilia are working to raise money for that
- Where to get additional resources (see the links below)
Links mentioned in this episode:
- September Workshop with Suzanne O’Brien (and Dr. Wyatt): Top Lessons Learned from Those at the End of Life: How to be Resilient in Difficult Times
- Access free articles from the NIB Journal here
- Donate to support the open access of the symposium here
- NDE resources from the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)
- Resources for veterans with NDE’s
- IANDS NDE Radio with Lee Witting (I was a guest!)
- Contact Heidi Walsh: narrativebioethics@gmail.com
- Contact Lilia Samoilo: NDE-goc@outlook.com
- Subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Stitcher Radio
- Check out the Series I’ve recorded in the past here
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