The Diary Of A CEO · Oct 19, 2026 · 1h 23m · 75m saved
With Christopher Kerr, Hospice Physician, Neurobiologist and CEO of Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo; author of "Death Is But a Dream"
Close to 90% of dying patients have unusually vivid dreams or visions as death approaches, Christopher Kerr, hospice physician and CEO of Hospice & Palliative Care Buffalo, told Steven Bartlett on The Diary Of A CEO podcast. The people they see are almost always the ones who loved them.
Medical school trains doctors to defeat death, and most never ask the dying what they experience. Christopher has spent his career asking, and he says the patient's view is the only one that counts at the end of life.
"We've lost our way with dying. There's such a lack of information, and that void is overwhelmingly felt with fear and mistruths, compounded by the fact that doctors don't have these discussions." — Christopher Kerr
Christopher has been a hospice doctor for about 30 years, has formally interviewed roughly 1,500 dying patients, has published around 15 peer-reviewed papers on what they report, and holds a PhD in neurobiology. He was also treated for stage-four cancer himself.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 1 hour 23 minutes of audio, 8 minutes of reading.
Here are the 8 lessons that matter.
Key Takeaways
Close to 90% of dying patients have vivid dreams or visions, mostly of people who loved them unconditionally
About half of them happen while the patient is awake
Patients rate the visions a 10 out of 10 for realism, and they leave comforted, unlike delirium, which frightens
The visions intensify in the last one to two weeks of life, which Christopher links to dying as a deepening form of sleep
The first thing hospice patients care about is not being a burden, not their own fear of death
Christopher disputes the popular "five regrets of the dying" because his own data show regret rarely comes up
His own stage-four cancer changed how he lives more than 30 years of patient interviews did
Christopher says the data do not prove an afterlife, but that the people who loved us stay accessible
1. Thirty Years With the Dying
Christopher said he came to hospice medicine "by accident." Medical school, as he describes it, prepares doctors to beat death rather than to care for people who are past treatment.
Christopher Kerr defines a hospice doctor by who is left to treat
"A hospice doctor cares for that individual who is no longer deemed treatable." — Christopher Kerr
He began formally interviewing his patients because he came to believe their account of dying mattered more than the clinical one. He credits nursing colleagues, who he said were more attuned to patients than doctors were, for that view. The work now covers roughly 1,500 patients and around 15 peer-reviewed papers.
Christopher Kerr started the interviews because the clinical view left the patient out
"Because their perspectives matter... what the patient perspective is, is the one that matters." — Christopher Kerr
