Beside patients and families, from diagnosis to goodbye

Derrick Hall is a hospice chaplain, author, and educator with 10 years of experience in hospice care. He walks beside people living with serious illness and the families who love them, from diagnosis through care, goodbye, and the grief that follows.

He wrote From Diagnosis to Goodbye™ after noticing how easily a patient’s voice can grow quiet in the middle of a health crisis. Families may be trying to protect someone they love. Care teams have urgent information to explain. Even with the best intentions, there may be too little space to ask the person at the center of it all what matters most to them.

The book invites patients, families, caregivers, and professionals to make that space again—to listen, ask, and keep the person’s wishes present as the journey changes.

Companion workbooks and study guides carry this same approach into reflection and conversation: see the person, hear the voice, and honor the journey.