Nurse Julie McFadden has spent years at the bedside of dying patients and often speaks openly about what she has learned from witnessing countless final moments.

The hospice nurse, widely known online as Hospice Nurse Julie, has cared for hundreds of people at the end of their lives and has shared that many patients reflect honestly on their lives as death approaches.

Julie has built a massive following across social media, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube and Instagram and more than a million followers on TikTok. She is also the author of Nothing to Fear: Demystifying Death to Live More Fully, a New York Times bestseller.

In one of her videos, Julie revealed three things she personally avoids because they can shorten a person’s life: drinking alcohol every day, smoking or vaping, and riding motorcycles or ATVs.

Speaking about vaping specifically, Julie said: “Vaping is just as bad [as smoking],” adding: “It affects more than just the lungs. It affects your whole cardiovascular system.”

She went on to say of booze: “I’ve seen enough people die alcoholic deaths, meaning from liver cirrhosis, because of drinking, to know that it is not good. And it is preventable.”

Julie has also previously talked about what people tend to say when they reach the very end of their lives and are reflecting from their deathbeds.

In a 2024 conversation with Rob Moore on the Disruptors podcast, she explained that the most common regret people express is spending too much of their lives working—something she acknowledges is difficult to avoid when financial responsibilities are involved.

The second regret, which she says comes up even more often, centers on an area of life where people actually have far more control.

Julie said: “The main thing people say, that I don’t hear a lot of people mention, is ‘I wish I would have appreciated my health’.”

It’s easy to take our health for granted when we’re feeling well, but as soon as sickness hits, it can make us long for our health again.

Having seen that happen on a much more impactful scale, Julie has attempted to learn from her patients and now writes a ‘gratitude list’ each night to remember what people take for granted, and what she’s grateful for.

She explained: “I like the fact that I can breathe, I’m walking around, I can feel the sunshine – little things like that.

“I think the biggest thing I hear from people [who are] dying is that they wish they would have appreciated how well they felt before.”