Barbara Karnes, RN, award winning hospice nurse and nationally prominent speaker on the dynamics of dying, authored the four booklets on which many providers of end-of-life care rely: “Gone From My Sight: The Dying Experience (The Blue Book),” “My Friend I Care: The Grief Experience,” “A Time To Live: Living with a Life-Threatening Illness” and “The Eleventh Hour: A Caring Guideline for the Hours to Minutes Before Death.” Her book, The Final Act of Living: Reflections of a Longtime Hospice Nurse, is a hospice training manual with heart. It is a resource utilized in universities, for hospice orientation of staff and volunteers, and in end-of-life related areas. It is also useful for any lay reader. Barbara’s 27 year career as an end-of-life educator is predicated on her experience as Executive Director of hospice and home health agencies as well as having worked through the hospice ranks as patient care manager, clinical director, staff nurse and volunteer. From 1989 until 1994 Barbara served as Director of Hospice and Home Health at Olathe Medical Center, a suburb of Kansas City before that Executive Director of Hospice Care of Mid-America in Kansas City, Missouri. Since 1994, she has been educating professionals and lay people through the presentation of workshops and lectures across the country.