Barbara Karnes, RN

Barbara Karnes, RN, is an internationally respected speaker, educator, author, and thought leader on matters of end of life. She is a renowned authority on the dying process and a leading educator for families, healthcare professionals, and the community at large.

Barbara's award-winning DVDs and books about death and dying are changing lives — in this country and around the world. In her work, Barbara compassionately explains stages of the dying process, living with a life threatening illness, pain management, and how people grieve. She explains how important it is to take care of yourself as a caregiver and offers guidelines for professionals.

Barbara has held both clinical and leadership positions, including staff nurse, clinical supervisor, and executive director at hospices and home health care agencies. Since 1994, Barbara has traveled the country speaking about end of life issues and the stages of dying at national and state hospice and palliative care organization conferences, state associations, colleges, nursing schools, hospitals, and hospices. She is the expert that hospice and other healthcare professionals count on to teach them how to explain the dying process to families.

Barbara has dedicated the last 40 years of her life to the education, care, and support of dying people and their loved ones. The most useful and important things that she's learned along the way have been distilled into her materials.