Hospice pioneer William Lamers Jr. dies
Photo credit: Handout | Dr. William Lamers, Jr., a psychiatrist considered one of the founders of the modern hospice movement in the United States, died Feb. 2, 2012, in Malibu of an infection, his family said. He was 80.
"I'm not sick; I'm only dying," a friend told Dr. William Lamers Jr. The man had inoperable cancer and wanted to go home to die, but his doctor wouldn't let him out of the hospital.
It was the early 1970s, when most people with incurable illnesses died in a hospital, in a lonely room, attended by doctors and nurses with no specialized knowledge of the dying patient's emotional and physical...
