Experiences at the end of life testify to our greatest needs: to love and be loved, to be nurtured and feel connected, to be remembered, and forgiven.
Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has tended to thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love, meaning and grace. They reveal that there is hope beyond cure as they transition from a focus on treatment to notions of personal meaning.
In his extraordinary and beautiful book, Death is But a Dream, Dr. Kerr shares his patients' stories and his own research pointing to death as not purely the end of life, but as a final passage of humanity and transcendence.
Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and families, as well as more than a decade of published research, Dr. Kerr reveals why pre-death dreams and visions are remarkable events that bring comfort and exemplify human resilience. His research on end-of-life experiences are the focus of a Netflix documentary series, "Surviving Death" as well as a PBS documentary.
Christopher Kerr is the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Executive Officer at Hospice and Palliative Care Buffalo. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Chris earned his MD as well as a PhD in Neurobiology.
Dr. Kerr’s background in research has evolved from bench science towards the human experience of illness as witnessed from the bedside, specifically patient’s dreams and visions at the end of life. Although medically ignored, these near universal experiences often provide comfort and meaning, as well as insight into the life led and the death anticipated.
To date, the research team at Hospice Buffalo has published multiple studies on this topic and documented over 1,500 end-of-life events, many of which are videotaped. This work was the subject of his TEDx Buffalo Talk which has been viewed over 4.8 million times. It has been the subject of reports on The BBC, in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Scientific American Mind, Huffington Post, and Psychology Today.
It is also featured in a recent docu-series on Netflix called Surviving Death and a PBS World Channel Documentary called Death Is but A Dream. Dr. Kerr’s work has also been published in a book (Death Is but A Dream) by Penguin Random House which was released in 2020 in multiple languages.
You can learn more about Dr Kerr and the work of his team at www.drchristopherkerr.com.
Interview recorded on 09/09/22
