PBS Documentary on End-of-Life Care Airs Tonight

A new documentary, Facing Death, which was written, produced and directed by Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor, the women behind the Emmy-award winning FRONTLINE documentary The Undertaking, will air Tuesday, November 23 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS*.

How far would you go to sustain the life of someone you love, or your own? When the moment comes, and you’re confronted with the prospect of “pulling the plug,” do you know how you’ll respond?

Unfounded rumors of federal “death panels” grabbed headlines last summer, but the real decisions of how we die ? the questions that most of us prefer to put off ? are being made quietly behind closed doors, increasingly on the floors of America’s intensive care units.

In Facing Death, FRONTLINE gains extraordinary access to The Mount Sinai Medical Center, one of New York’s biggest hospitals, to examine the complicated reality of today’s modern, medicalized death. Doctors and nurses struggle to guide families through the maze of end-of-life choices: whether to pull feeding and breathing tubes, when to perform expensive surgeries and therapies or to call for hospice. The film also offers an unusually intimate portrait of patients facing the prospect of dying in ways that they might never have wanted or imagined.

For more information about Facing Death, visit www.pbs.org/frontline/facing-death.

* While Facing Death is expected to air on November 23 at 9 p.m. ET on most PBS stations, check local listings to confirm all broadcast dates and times in your area.

Source: NFDA.org