99 Ways to Avoid Death: Lessons from Author and ER Physician Dr. Ashely Alker

Episode 69 • 5th March 2026 • How I Doctor with Dr. Graham Walker • Offcall

Most people spend their entire lives trying not to think about death. Emergency physicians don't have that option.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Offcall co-founder Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Ashely Alker an emergency physician, founder of Meaningful Media, and author of 99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them.

This episode goes somewhere most medical conversations don't. And that's the point.

Because death isn't an abstract concept in the emergency department. It's the patient who never documented their wishes and ended up on a ventilator they never wanted. It's the 19-year-old with undiagnosed Marfan syndrome you catch while suturing a hand. It's the lost patients you carry with you forever.

Ashely has been thinking about death since her twenties, when she lost her mother and became the de facto medical translator for a family with no one else to turn to. That personal history, combined with years on the front lines of emergency medicine, is what eventually became a book she wrote for the patients who need it most.

This episode is an honest conversation about what emergency medicine teaches you about dying and how that changes the way you live.

What You'll Learn

Why ER physicians remember their lost patients more vividly than their greatest saves — and what that means for how we process the emotional weight of the work
How Ashlely thinks about the gap between helping people live longer versus helping them live better, and why the ER is the hardest place to close it
Why storytelling is a clinical skill, and how physicians who don't engage with public communication cede the conversation to people with no training
What writing a book about death taught Ashely about being a better doctor and a more intentional human being

Resources & Where to Find Ashely

99 Ways to Die and How to Avoid Them — available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent bookstores everywhere

Ashely's Website

Instagram

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📝 For a full transcript of this episode click HERE

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