We hope over the upcoming weeks and months you will enjoy learning and exploring the more "creative" side of palliative medicine! As a way to get things rolling we thought it'd be fun to spend some time thinking about our top 10 palliative minded films. As you may imagine, the decision was tough. There are actually a lot of movies out there that deal with things like death, grief, mortality, etc. We tried to have each film cover a particular unique theme. We'll undoubtedly spend time in future posts exploring these great films.

Please comment if you have used these in teaching, or there are films you think should be in the top 10, or if you think the list should be reordered.

For now, here's Pallimed: Arts & Humanities top 10 palliative care films:

Plot summaries courtesy of the Internet Movie Database; Titles link to the film preview
10. One True Thing (A career woman reassesses her parents' lives after she is forced to care for her cancer-stricken mother.)

9. The Fountain (Spanning over one thousand years, and three parallel stories this is a story of love, death, spirituality and the fragility of our existence in this world)

8. Big Fish (A story about a son trying to learn more about his dying father by reliving stories and myths his father told him about himself)

7. Life as a House (When a man is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he takes custody of his misanthropic teenage son)

6. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (The true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with an almost totally paralyzed body; only his left eye isn't paralyzed)

5. The Sea Inside (The real-life story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30 year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die)

4. On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying (Four part PBS series by journalist Bill Moyers that focuses on end-of-life care in the US)

3. Two Weeks (In this bittersweet comedy, four adult siblings gather at their dying mother's house in North Carolina for what they expect to be a quick, last goodbye)

2. The Doctor (Jack Mckee is a doctor with it all: he's successful, he's rich, and he has no problems...until he is diagnosed with throat cancer)

1. Wit (A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer)

“Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.”
Robert Motherwell

As this is the first post of the Pallimed: Arts & Humanities Blog, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell all of you why we feel this topic important. Why art and palliative care? What do the two topics really have to do with each other?

First of all, themes common to palliative care such as death, grief, and chronic illness are also common themes in the arts. People have been getting sick and dying since the beginning of time and they have been making art to memorialize the occasion for almost as long. It seems like such a great fit to talk about these topics together.

In palliative care, we deal with (and experience) a lot of emotions: anger, sadness, frustration, relief, sometimes even joy. The arts are a great outlet for emotions. Many people journal or write stories to deal with emotional issues. We use art therapy to help our patients deal with their illnesses. As lovers of the arts, we see writing this as a little bit of self-care (an emotional outlet for us). We hope that reading this blog is a little bit of self-care for you, the reader, as well.

Just writing this will be a great learning experience for us. We hope you will learn something and then teach us something new through your comments. We’re definitely not art experts, just interested palliative care doctors, so we’re open to hear if you agree or disagree with the things we write. Ultimately, we hope this builds your interest in palliative care and the arts so you can share your enthusiasm with those around you.