Schedule

Watch Dr. Kerr’s TEDx Talk on this topic here.

Experiences at the end of life, including dreams and visions, testify to our greatest needs: to love and be loved, to be nurtured and feel connected, to be remembered, and forgiven. Although medically ignored, these are near universal experiences and often provide comfort and meaning. To date, the research team at Hospice Buffalo has published multiple studies on this topic and documented more than 1,500 end-of-life events, many of which are videotaped.

This session will focus on published research that describes and validates patients dreams and visions at the end of life. Dr. Kerr will explore how these near universal experiences often provide comfort and meaning as well as insight into the life led. The presentation includes videos of patients and families describing the meaningfulness of these powerful end of life experiences.

Speaker:
Christopher Kerr, MD, PhD

The Interprofessional Spiritual Care Curriculum (ISPEC), offered since 2018, is an evidence-informed curriculum that trains interprofessional health teams to recognize and attend to the spiritual needs of seriously or chronically ill patients. Addressing spiritual and religious issues is essential to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and fundamental to respectful care. Based on the generalist-specialist spiritual care model, clinician-chaplain pairs attend ISPEC to learn content, teaching, and leadership skills. To date, more than 500 attendees from 29 countries have participated in ISPEC.

This session will teach key concepts from the six-module ISPEC curriculum, particularly focusing on spiritual distress, spiritual assessment, and clinician well-being.

Speakers:
Christina Puchalski, MD, MS, OCDS, FACP, FAAHPM
Rev. Richard W. Bauer, MM, BCC, MSW

A Critical Access Hospital (CAH) is a rural hospital certified by Medicare to provide essential access to high-quality health care in communities without access to larger facilities. It can be challenging to provide palliative care in a CAH due to lack of resources. This session will discuss how to start and maintain a palliative care program in a CAH.  The speakers will discuss how to build a sustainable program that meets the unique challenges of rural communities with limited resources from development to implementation to continuing community education.

Speakers:
Caitlin (Cate) Carl, BSN, RN
Anna Engle, MSN, RN
Mark Houghton, MSN, AGACNP-BC

Grief begins with the diagnosis of a serious illness. This session will focus on the nature of that grief. Through an interactive format, learners will receive the tools and knowledge needed to intentionally respond to this grief in compassionate ways. This session will also provide suggestions for the caregivers on how to process their own grief.

Speaker:
Darryl Owens, MDiv, BCC, CT

Management of nausea and vomiting in patients with serious illnesses can be challenging, especially given the multitude of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic management strategies that clinicians must choose from. One of the most significant worries that clinicians have with using medications to treat nausea is the risk of QT prolongation and subsequent risk of torsades de pointes. Utilizing non-pharmacologic management strategies may mitigate these risks, and one of the most novel management strategies is inhaled isopropyl alcohol. This session will cover pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic management of nausea, with a focus on inhaled isopropyl alcohol as a safe non-pharmacologic intervention.

Speaker:
Maximillian H. Stevenson, PharmD, MA, BCPS

This session is aimed at bringing awareness to identifying, diagnosing, and approaching clinical management for patients living with opioid use disorder (OUD) and/or developing OUD while under the care of palliative teams.

Speakers:
Ryan Baldeo, MPAS, MSPC, PA-C, FAAHPM
Tracy Piparo, PA-C, DFAAPA

During this session, Dr. Blinka will share her research on grief and the hospice family caregiver. Through engaging dialogue and the use of telenovela (video clips), learners will be better prepared to provide care to caregivers. 

Speaker:
Marcela Blinka, PhD, MSW, LCSW-C

Join an interprofessional, international panel discussion with palliative care clinicians from Tanzania and the United States. The panel will discuss models of palliative care through a reciprocal learning lens in order to improve the delivery of care at home and abroad. 

Speakers:
Elias Snyder, PhD, FNP-C, ACHPN®
Paul Z. Mmbando, MD, MPH
Amon Israel Marti, MD, MMED
Nosim Sirikwa Peter, MSW

Hospice care has been shown to improve end-of-life outcomes for adults with chronic illness, yet with eligibility limited to a six-month prognosis, the hospice system is not structured to meet longer-term needs. This session will examine live discharge as a critical care transition through an interprofessional lens, including potential measures of quality and continuity, how hospice care coordination or caregivers’ social contexts impact experiences of the transition, and a potential interprofessional intervention to improve the overall process.

Speakers:
Stephanie Wladkowski, PhD, LMSW, APHSW-C
Cara L.  Wallace, PhD, LMSW, APHSW-C
Leslie Hinyard, PhD, MSW
Karla T. Washington, PhD
Verna L.  Hendricks-Ferguson, PhD, RN, FPCN, FAAN

In rural communities, access to palliative care can be limited or non-existent, leading to broad disparities in care for rural residents who are living with serious and terminal illnesses. Community-based, primary palliative support, delivered by community health workers (CHWs), is a solution to ensure equitable care for rural residents. This session will describe a partnership between a community-based organization and Oregon State University in development, delivery, and evaluation of a hybrid continuing education course in palliative care for CHWs as part of a broader vision of an Oregon Network for Community-Based Serious Illness Support.

Speakers:
Erin Collins, MN, RN, CHPN®
Oralia Mendez, MPH, CHW

Individuals with life-limiting illnesses can have both worsening physical suffering and psychiatric distresses with comorbid depression, along with increased rates of pain, fatigue, dyspnea, and worse survival outcomes. Evidence supports protocol development to address depression in the hospice setting using validated screening tools, along with a process for referral and treatment. In this session, learn how implementing a standard practice protocol allows for consistent evaluation through the use of validated screening tools and increased detection of symptoms of depression.

Speaker:
Beth A. Williams, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, ACHPN®

Assessing discomfort in nonverbal patients through behaviors has led to many tools that serve multiple populations; however, for the patient with Developmental Delay (DD), these tools may prove ineffective and may leave the patient with uncontrolled symptoms. In this session, learn how an academic hospital is currently researching a tool developed for adults with DD to determine if it can be utilized for pediatrics. This tool relies on caregivers familiar with the patient to document their observations so health care providers can utilize this information to assess discomfort. This session will cover the positive results of the preliminary data  and discuss the implementation plans for all nonverbal patients with Developmental Delay.

Speaker:
Jeannette M.  Meyer, MSN, RN, CCRN, CCNS, PCCN, ACHPN®

The death of a child is a traumatic experience that can have a significant impact on the health of bereaved parents. The purpose of a systematic review is to synthesize the available research on bereaved parents’ health outcomes, including physical, mental, and emotional health. This review utilized the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) method to review the available evidence on the health outcomes of bereaved parents whose children (0-18) died from a life-limiting condition. Learners will review the evidence of the review, which showed a wide variety of physical and psychosocial consequences of parental bereavement. In addition, the session will cover the review’s identification of a need for individually tailored grief interventions to support bereaved parents.

Speakers:
Nancy Dias, PhD, MSN, RN, FPCN
Mikayla Mitchell, DNP, APRN
Savannah Horvick, BSN, RN

This interactive session will highlight the importance of advocacy with the work of the interprofessional team and the care they provide. The panel will present examples of how organizations have effectively combined data with clinician stories to change policies, and offer resources for attendees to begin sharing their stories with policymakers at the local, state, and national levels.

Speakers:
Panel of Advocacy Representatives