Navigating Serious Illness: Palliative Care Perspectives Across Asian and Western Cultures

Western and Asian cultures can have differing core values that influence how people navigate serious illness, including end-of-life (EOL) care. Understanding differences in these values can help patients, families, and healthcare professionals work collaboratively to provide care consistent with personal, familial, and cultural values. Acknowledging where differing values may conflict can help patients, families, and healthcare professionals engage in preparatory conversations to minimize disagreements and support harmony across cultures.

This discussion highlights the differences in the EOL experience between people living in the United States (US) and in Asian countries as well as differences between EOL care received by Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans within the US. The speakers explore how core and societal values likely contribute to these differences and offer guidance for how families, from all cultures, can navigate serious illness and engage in care planning to minimize the potential for unnecessary distress during a difficult illness and at the end of life. Learn tips for starting conversations within families and with healthcare professionals, as well as additional resources that can be used for these conversations.

Grant Smith, MD is a palliative care physician and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine. He is the medical director of the Stanford Palliative Care Community Partnerships Team. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency in internal medicine and fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. As part of the Stanford faculty, he is an attending physician on the palliative care inpatient service and in the outpatient palliative care clinic in Palo Alto.

Jean Yih, MBA is a medical interpreter at Stanford Health Care since 2015 and a past Board Chair of the Chinese American Coalition for Compassionate Care (CACCC), which aims to enhance advanced illness and end of life care by improving advance care planning and decision-making for Chinese Americans through community outreach education and volunteer, caregiver, and health professional training. She is a CACCC warmline volunteer, interpreter, translator, and facilitator of Heart-to-Heart advance care planning sessions. She received her master’s in business administration from California State University, Sacramento.

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