How can we stay safe when hospitalized? Or ensure that we'll die peacefully in a serene setting, instead of stuck in a hospital with a pull-the-plug decision that we had intended to avoid? It's too easy to make mistakes—despite our desire or advance directives—due to chance, error, shifting events,or design.

Hospitals advise us to bring someone to advocate on our behalf, or accompany a loved one to advocate on their behalf. We must know quite a lot in order to succeed. Advocating in medical circumstances is complex, going way beyond serving as an extra pair of ears or approving treatment choices when your loved one cannot. We must arrive at every hospitalization knowing what to expect and what to do in order to minimize and manage very real risks. The consequences of failure range from close calls to significant harm to death and lifelong regret.

Bart Windrum's presentations and books empower patient-families. Bart's family learned the hard way and he offers unique insights, freshly expressed, from a lay person’s unbeholden perspective. Bart suggests options that medicine simply doesn't think to offer us. Working back from the universal goal—to die in peace—Bart shows how to evaluate the last quarter of life to help orient us toward peaceful dying.