Using Your Experience and Creativity in the Service of Others: Your Mission in End-of-Life Care
David Kessler
David Kessler is fast gaining a reputation as one
of the best known experts in the field of hospice and end-of-life
care today, as a result of reaching hundreds of thousands of people
through his books. His newest book is LIFE
LESSONS, two experts on death and dying teach us about the
mysteries of life and living, which is co-authored with Elisabeth
Kübler Ross, who will be receiving IANDS' 2004 Lifetime
Achievement Award at this year's conference.
His first book, THE NEEDS OF THE DYING: a guide for
bringing hope, comfort and love to life's final chapter, is
often the number one best-selling hospice book in the USA and
received praise from Mother Teresa a few months before her
death. It is published by Harper Collins Publishing and has
been translated and published in over 11 countries worldwide.
David has helped thousands of men, women and children face life
and death with peace, dignity and courage. His experiences have
taken him from the Auschwitz concentration camp to Mother Teresa's
Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta. His services have been
used by Elizabeth Taylor, Jamie Lee Curtis and Marianne Williamson
when their loved ones faced life challenging illnesses. He
also worked with Anthony Perkins, Michael Landon and industrialist
Armand Hammer when they faced their own deaths. He is no
stranger to disaster and trauma. He has often worked with the loss
and grief of mass casualties, volunteering his services as a member
of the Red Cross's Aviation Disaster team (the Aspen plane crash)
and as a Special Reserve Police Officer for the Los Angeles Police
Department's trauma team. He works with the next of kin as
well as survivors (e.g.the Singapore Airlines crash). In addition
to his expertise in grief and loss, the Red Cross and the Los
Angeles Police Department have trained him for the most critical,
tragic and horrific situations possible, which of course included
9/11, and Ground Zero.
David takes his experiences and turns them into inspiring and
motivational lectures for audiences around the world. He also
teaches therapists, doctors and nurses on grief and loss and leads
a support group for people with cancer. David is a certified
trainer through the American Medical Association/EPEC program
(EPEC- Education for Professionals on End of life Care). In his
daily work he is Director of Palliative Care for Citrus Valley
Health Partners, which has three hospitals and home hospice as well
as a freestanding in-patient hospice unit in the Los Angeles area
with over 900 physicians and 2,000 nurses.
His work has been discussed in the "Los Angeles Times", the "New
York Times", "Business Week" and "Life Magazine", and has been
featured on CNN-Cross Fire, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, "Entertainment
Tonight" and "Sally Jessy Raphael." He recently wrote articles on
end of life care for the Boston Globe and The San Francisco
Chronicle. For more information and resources, please visit
