BJ Miller: From Caregiver to Care Reciever to Palliative Care Physician
- S9E17
- 49:02
- July 27th 2021
Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability.
BJ has worked in all settings of care: hospital, clinic, residential facility, and home. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering, illness, and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human-centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level.
Listen in and learn how BJ and the staff at Mettle Health are creating Healing Ties all around us!
Healing Ties
Beyond Caregiving...How do care?
How do we care for our family, friends, and the strangers we meet? How do we care for the community we live in?
How do we heal the physical, social, financial, spiritual aspects of our life and the lives of those around us?
We do this by creating Healing Ties!
By sharing their stories with host Christopher MacLellan, our guests reveal how they are creating Healing Ties in their community by their words, actions, and deeds.
Meet the Team
Affectionately known as “The Bow Tie Guy" in the vast network of family caregivers, Christopher MacLellen is the Author of "What's The Deal with Caregiving" and the host of Healing Ties podcast featured on The Whole Care Network.
The story of Chris and his deceased partner, Richard Schiffer was chronicled in a 2015 Pulitzer Prize nominated story “In Sickness and In Health: A Couple’s Final Journey” about their journey of caregiving. Seen by over 500,000 people world-wide the story told of the challenges that LGBT partners have in dealing with the medical and legal system, but it also told of the love and joy that Richard’s last years had on their relationship.
Chris' masters degree thesis, Caregiving, Stress and its Impact on the Work Place was accepted by the faculty at Gonzaga University in 2016 where he earned a masters degree in Leadership and Communication.
Chris founded the Whole Care Network in 2016, presents regularly on topics that impact family Caregivers and now is Aging Gayfully after caregiving has ended.