end of life

The Chaplain and the Doctor is a compelling documentary that chronicles the professional partnership and devoted friendship of two women who are working together in palliative care for patients suffering from long term or terminal diseases. Chaplain Betty Clark and Doctor Jessica Zitter work tirelessly to ease the physical and emotional sufferng of a wide spectrum of patients at Highland Hospital, the public hospital in Oakland, California. The film follows them in their rounds and records their meetings and private discussions about how to fulfill the needs of their patients and to sustain their own faith and emotional fortitude while addressing so much paain, angst and anguish on a daily basis.

The American health system is a mess, to put it lightly. A good chunk of the mess comes from the racist and xenophobic views embedded within the medical system. This film shows how palliative care patients come up against discrimination and almost indestructible red tape. Chaplain Betty Clark, who is the daughter of sharecroppers and whose great-grandmother was born into slavery, and Doctor Jessica Zitter, a holocaust survivor, have a relationship that is forged, in part, because of their shared generational trauma.