What Every Doctor Needs to Know About Palliative Care | Dr Caryn Khoo

Most doctors graduate believing palliative care means “giving up.” Dr Caryn Khoo spent fifteen years proving them wrong.Dr Caryn Khoo Shiao Yen is a Stanford-trained palliative medicine physician who returned to Malaysia in 2013 — not to a system that was ready for her, but to build one from scratch. She headed the palliative care department at the National Cancer Institute for four years, helped shape Malaysia’s National Palliative Care Policy, and now practices at Sunway Medical Centre.In this episode, she delivers the palliative care masterclass every doctor never got in medical school: what palliative care actually is (and isn’t), the 2010 NEJM evidence that early palliative care improves survival in metastatic lung cancer, why collusion around bad news is so common in Malaysian culture and how to handle it, the right way to have DNR conversations, and how any doctor can start using palliative principles today.Selina also shares a deeply personal story about her father’s pancreatic cancer — the two years he lived fully, and the final week that was chaotic because palliative care was never involved.Dr Caryn Khoo holds an MD from Dalhousie University, completed Internal Medicine training at Mayo Clinic, and is board certified by ABIM in both Internal Medicine and Palliative Medicine following her Stanford Fellowship.