Rights of Passage provides clinical and trauma-informed care for individuals considering medical aid in dying (legal in New Mexico since 2021), voluntary stopping of eating and drinking, conscious dying techniques, and other choices at end-of-life.
(505) 660-1446
info@rightsofpassage.org
What We Do
From the first visit to the last, we give direct medical care as needed, including consultations, assessments, exams, treatments and prescriptions. We provide detailed anticipatory guidance to support your access to the kind of death you want to create.
Our first conversations with patients are centered around learning the patient’s values, wishes, fears and hopes. We maximize cooperation with the existing care team, including individuals and agencies.
We prescribe and administer any needed medications, and of course will attend deaths as desired. We also support families in the immediate aftercare of their loved one.
Payment
We feel strongly that an individual’s resources should not dictate their access to the best possible care at end of life.
Our work is supported by tax deductible donations from patients, their families, foundations and other generous donors. Every dollar helps!
Those who can donate at the highest levels provide a valuable resource for New Mexicans of all backgrounds. Those without means are comforted to know that their needs were compassionately supported by those who have gone before, and their surviving loved ones.
If you have a special idea about how to honor your loved one with a unique legacy, we invite you to contact us.
Rights of Passage gratefully acknowledges the fiscal sponsorship of New Mexico Foundation (NMF). NMF is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization in accordance with Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
Who We Are
Both Spanish-speaking, Lynn Nauman, MD and Leah Becker, PA are similarly informed by their lifetime experiences of personal and professional joys and losses. In early 2023, we began dreaming together of a patient care model that provides widely available, highly personalized, and clinically skilled services to those approaching death. We stand on the shoulders of the attentive clinicians who have developed research-based best practices in this field, the advocates who have worked so hard to make all options available for all people, and those who have sought the right to self-direction.
Our Philosophy
All people have the right to choose their own path. As death approaches, we center our care around your values. We provide care regardless of economic resources. We are honored to support all choices.
Lynn Nauman, MD
Lynn Nauman is board certified in both emergency and hospice palliative medicine. Over the last 30 years, Dr. Nauman has seen precious lives born and precious lives die. Most of her career has been in the emergency department where the complications of life and death are present every day. This existential reality informs every part of her life. For Dr. Nauman, “It is a privilege to be a doctor. It is both breathtaking and heartbreaking.”
Dr. Nauman’s varied emergency department settings have included the Navajo reservation, a military facility in El Paso and rural communities, most recently Española in Rio Arriba County. After leaving the rigors of the emergency department, she is now dedicating her entire practice to hospice and palliative medicine. Self determination is a core value for Dr. Nauman. She encourages patients to be proactive in their decisions surrounding their end-of-life care. Dr Nauman is in awe of the intimacy and mystery of being with patients at this vulnerable time of death and dying.
Leah Becker, PA-C, SEP
Leah Becker first worked with the dying in the early 90s at The Hospice at Mission Hill in Boston, MA. This experience inspired her to embark on her PA training at the Yale School of Medicine, completed in 1997. Leah is comfortable working in the realms of conventional medicine, functional medicine, bio-identical hormones, as well as alternative and holistic approaches; she is also a Somatic Experiencing Trauma Therapy Provider, and an End-of-Life Doula. Through the prism of family practice, Leah has been honored to witness the broadest spectrum of health issues, expressed over years in the lives of individuals. Leah prioritizes educating patients to be able to choose the best health care decisions for themselves, and she delivers medical care from a trauma-informed perspective.
A core value for Leah is to help de-traumatize the dying process as much as possible for patients and their families. She feels that in a death-phobic culture, the last great gift an individual can give themselves is to allow the arc of their life to inform and enrich their death.
Contact Us
We warmly invite you to make a referral for a patient, or to contact us to discuss your own options at (505) 660-1446. You may also email us at:
More Resources
These organizations provide excellent education on end-of-life choices and laws.
End of Life Options New Mexico
Compassion and Choices
Death with Dignity
