01/21/2026
We are excited to share a recent article Liz Anderson co-authored in Kidney Medicine on using empathy in shared decision-making conversations with people who are considering active medical management without dialysis.
These conversations aren’t just about medical facts.
They’re about values, fear, identity, and the emotional weight of choosing how to live when health is changing.
This work sits at the intersection of medicine, meaning, and loss — a place we care deeply about, both as a clinicians and grief therapists.
Shared decision making (SDM) is the preferred model for medical decision making, but implementation in kidney failure treatment decisions remains suboptimal. We educated nephrology clinicians to engage in comprehensive SDM with empathetic communication.
