FAIRFIELD—Enhancing a patient’s quality of life, providing patients and families with supportive and spiritual care, and incorporating an interdisciplinary healthcare approach towards pain and symptom management, are all essential criterion to be met in the field of palliative and end-of-life care.
In an effort to emphasize the importance of this rapidly growing field, the Connecticut Coalition to Improve End-of-Life Care (CTEOL), in collaboration with Fairfield University’s Kanarek Center for Palliative Care Nursing Education at The Marion Peckham Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies will be sponsoring an informative all-day conference entitled “Spiritual and Cultural Dimensions of Palliative and End-of-Life Care.”The conference will take place in the Egan School’s Kanarek Center for Palliative Care Nursing Education on Saturday, March 30 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
“The upcoming conference is sure to enhance audience knowledge and skills concerning compassionate spiritual and cultural palliative and end-of-life care,” said Director of the Kanarek Center for Palliative Care Nursing Education Eileen O’Shea, DNP, APRN, PCNS-BC, CHPPN.
The topic for this conference was developed in response to two previously conducted Connecticut Healthcare Provider surveys, which identified spiritual and cultural knowledge gaps within the realm of palliative and end-of-life care education. The CTEOL education task force has lined up spiritually dynamic and culturally diverse presenters for the conference, including keynote speaker Dr. Christina Puchalski, from The George Washington University Institute for Spirituality and Heath. She will deliver the keynote entitled “Responding to Spiritual Distress: The Art of Presence.” The conference panelists will explore a wide array of subject matters relating to the palliative care field and will touch upon issues increasingly pressing within today’s medical community.
Christina Puchalski, MD, MS, FACP, FAAHPM, is a pioneer and international leader in the movement to integrate spirituality into healthcare in clinical settings and medical education. As founder and director of the George Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health (GWish) and professor of medicine at The George Washington University in Washington, DC, she continues to break new ground in the understanding and integration of spiritual care in a healthcare setting.
Dr. Puchalski is widely published in journals with work ranging from biochemistry research to issues in ethics, culture, and spiritual care. She has recently published a book with Oxford University Press entitled Time for Listening and Caring: Spirituality and the Care of the Seriously Ill and Dying.Her work has been featured in numerous print and television media. She is recognized for developing interdisciplinary educational curricula and innovative models of care.
In addition to Dr. Puchalski, the following distinguished individuals will serve as panelists at the conference:
- Lisa Caramico, MD will share her journey caring for her husband who lived with a terminal illness in her panel, “18 Months and Beyond.”
- Mark Lazenby, PhD, APRN, FAAN will explore how nursing practice addresses some of life’s biggest questions in “The Existential Plight of Cancer: Its Spiritual Dimensions.”
- Kevin Toolis will explore how communities across the globe dealt with death before the rise of the Western Death Machine in his panel, “My Father’s Wake: How the Irish teach us to Live, Love & Die.“
- Actress Judith Gantly will perform a one-woman play entitled, “Waltzing the Reaper,” which tries to communicate approaches to understanding the end-of-life process.
The conference fees for CTEOL Members is $110. For non-members, $135. Tickets for full time students are $65, and students must submit a form from their academic advisor affirming student’s current full-time status.
There are limited tickets for this event.
This event is co-sponsored by the Connecticut Coalition to Improve End-of-Life Care and the Fairfield University Marion Peckham Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies. Register at fairfield.edu/CTEOL.
Fairfield University is a modern, Jesuit Catholic university rooted in one of the world’s oldest intellectual and spiritual traditions. More than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students from the U.S. and across the globe are pursuing degrees in the University’s five schools. Fairfield embraces a liberal humanistic approach to education, encouraging critical thinking, cultivating free and open inquiry, and fostering ethical and religious values. The University is located on a stunning 200-acre campus on the scenic Connecticut coast just an hour from New York City.
