HFA's E-Newsletter - November 2011
Volume 11, Issue 11
In this issue:
- Message from Amy Tucci, President and CEO
- Focus on: National Day of Listening
- New HFA Book
- Lunch 'n Learn Series for Professionals
- HFA Resources
- New Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief
- Journeys Special Offer
- What's New @ HFA's Hospice and Caregiving Blog
- Upcoming Conferences and Educational Opportunities
Message from Amy Tucci, President and CEO
Each November, National Hospice Month reminds us that hospice and palliative care professionals, as well as hundreds of thousands of hospice volunteers nationwide, deserve daily recognition. From all of us at HFA, thank you for the work you do and the care you give each day, all year long.
I hope you and your organization have had a chance to view our New Perspectives program, Beyond Kübler-Ross: New Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief, which made its timely debut during National Hospice Month. This new HFA program is getting outstanding reviews nationwide, and it's not too late to become a site coordinator and share this groundbreaking program with your colleagues and communities.
HFA is well underway with its spring Living with Grief® program, End-of-Life Ethics. Available on DVD in April 2012, the program will feature an expert panel and interviews with individuals who have been intimately involved with ethical decision making, as well as experts who have played important roles in shaping the ethical and legal standards surrounding care, advanced illness and death in the United States.
HFA's staff continues to participate in interesting national conversations, most recently at a meeting of a new national coalition, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care. C-TAC (http://advancedcarecoalition.org/) is an alliance of patient and consumer advocacy groups, healthcare professionals and providers, private sector stakeholders, faith-based organizations, and healthcare payers, with the shared mission to help provide all Americans, especially the sickest and most vulnerable, with comprehensive, high quality, patient-centered care that is consistent with their goals.
Focus on: Natonal Day of Listening
The National Day of Listening was started by StoryCorps in 2008. Each year, on the day after Thanksgiving, StoryCorps asks all Americans to take an hour to record an interview with a loved one, using recording equipment readily available in most homes-such as computers, iPhones, tape recorders, or pen and paper-along with StoryCorps' free Do-It-Yourself Instruction Guide, available to download at www.nationaldayoflistening.org. It's one of the least expensive, but most meaningful, gifts you can give your loved ones this holiday season!
http://storycorps.org/initiatives/legacy/
The 2011 National Day of Listening takes place on Friday, November 25, 2011. Instead of getting lost in Black Friday's long shopping lines, get lost in a conversation with a loved one!
Those who work with the dying understand the important process of meaning-making at the end of life. HFA recently produced a series of webinars focusing on various techniques and strategies for supporting people in this process. For more information, go to:
http://www.hospicefoundation.org/webinars-spirituality
HFA Resources
HFA has great resources to support your work during National Hospice Month, the holidays, or anytime!
--HFA has easily accessible resources on our Hospice Information Center, including free downloadable Fact Sheets, videos and online programs. These resources can be used in community presentations and volunteer trainings, or share the links with referral sources or families who want to learn more about hospice. These materials are great resources to share with your communities this month, particularly the Hospice Information Center videos, which are perfect to show at a community education or outreach event.
With the holiday season approaching, hospices can share their expertise and resources as a support for grieving families. HFA has recently expanded and added new articles to its Winter Holidays Issue of Journeys. This newsletter, which is now six pages rather than four, provides a great and substantive way to reach out to the families you serve as well as new families or organizations in your community. The Winter Holidays issue features articles written by experts on a range of topics including: The 3 C's of Coping; Holiday Survival Strategies; Old and New Rituals for the Holiday Season; and a mother's personal story of grief during the holidays. See below for a great discount offer to help you provide this to more families.
Edited by Kenneth J. Doka & Amy S. Tucci, Beyond Kübler-Ross: New Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief looks closely at the pioneering legacy of the work of Kübler-Ross and discusses how professional understanding of dying and grief has progressed and developed. Readers will find spirited discourse on the most current issues surrounding the question of how people grieve and how professionals can best support them, in chapters and tools that will augment and even challenge their work. The book features chapters from some of the brightest thinkers in the field of grief: David Balk, Charles Corr, Kenneth Doka, Louis Gamino, Robert Neimeyer, Colin Murray Parkes, Paul Rosenblatt, and Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun.
In his chapter on the Strengths and Limitations of the Stage Theory Proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Charles Corr notes: "Like any important theorist who preceded us, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross helped advance our thinking in this field and sparked important efforts to find good in those who are coping with dying and in ourselves. She offered us constructive lessons; it is our responsibility to appreciate both the strengths and the limitations of what she wrote. That will not be accomplished by merely freezing our understandings of her work in an often simplistic reading of a theoretical model set forth in 1969.Turning to the future, we have opportunities to move forward in our thinking about coping with dying and helping those who are coping with dying."
New Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief
This month HFA released our newest program, Beyond Kübler-Ross: New Perspectives on Dying, Death and Grief. Hospice professionals utilize theory as a foundation for their hands-on experience as they continue to serve as a strong resource for those who are grieving. The program provides professionals an opportunity to hear from both esteemed researchers and long-time clinicians about how research and practice intersect. The discussion continues in more depth in our newly published book on the subject, and contains chapters by preeminent thanotologists.
Participating in HFA's first New Perspectives program -- Beyond Kübler-Ross: New Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief, provides a great educational opportunity. Available only on DVD, the program can be shown according to your schedule. Continuing education credits (2.5 CEs) are available until November 10, 2012. HFA's spring Living with Grief® program will focus on End-of-Life Ethics.
HFA's New Perspectives program is made possible in part by HFA Friends Dignity Memorial Funeral Providers and The Foundation for End-of-Life Care, presented in cooperation with the Association for Death Education and Counseling, The Compassionate Friends, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and The YGS Group.
We are currently seeking sponsors for the 2012 Living with Grief® program, End-of-Life Ethics. For more information on how to become a sponsor, contact Catherine Campbell at ccampbell@hospicefoundation.org. Sponsoring an HFA program guarantees visibility of your company throughout the United States to a large but select group of healthcare professionals.
As the holiday season approaches many people struggle with how to handle their grief. Support them during this time with the Winter Holidays Issue from Journeys--a Newsletter to Help in Bereavement. We've reformatted the issue, adding more information and articles with the addition of two additional pages, including a new piece by Charles Corr on helping grieving children cope with the holidays. Go online today and receive 20% off your order of the Holiday Issue! Use the code wh2011 to receive your discount. This offer expires December 10.
BONUS OFFER: Any organization ordering 100 copies or more will receive a FREE download of "Grief, Holidays, and Family Dynamics." This audio program features expert advice and practical assistance from Dr. Sherry Schachter and Dr. Kenneth Doka, discussing how professionals can better serve grieving families during these difficult times. One hour of CEs is included for a wide range of professionals.
Lunch 'n Learn Series for Professionals
HFA is presenting a one-hour webcast, Talking with Dying Patients and Their Families, as a live event on Wednesday, December 7, at 1:00 pm ET, and will then make it available for one year after that date. During this program a hospice physician, nurse and chaplain will use case studies to explore ways hospices can help community healthcare professionals all along the care continuum address this issue. For a limited time you may register your organization for this upcoming program at a special discount.
Go online today to receive 33% off the organization registration price. Use discount code 33LNL to receive this special price through December 31, 2011. Upcoming program topics will include: Grieving Children: How You Can Help; and Caregiver Burnout/Compassion Fatigue: How It Affects Families and Professionals - and How to Beat It.
What’s New @ HFA’s Hospice and Caregiving Blog
HFA’s Hospice and Caregiving Blog gathers and disseminates information useful to professionals and consumers from a single destination. Our goals are to inform, offer support, and generate online comments about important end-of life issues. Read some of the blog’s most recent postings:
- Physician Views on Palliative Care at the End of Life Shared
- Honoring Veterans at the End of Life
- The Love in Hospice
Subscribe to the Hospice and Caregiving blog feed and follow us on Twitter.
Upcoming Conferences and Educational Opportunities
On December 1st, AARP is hosting a roundtable of authors who have written about their caregiving experience; among the authors are Jane Gross, Walter Mosley, Howard Gleckman, Gail Sheehy and a half dozen more. The free program is also available via webcast from their website.
The Cleveland Clinic will hold a program on Palliative Medicine & Supportive Oncology 2012, on February 23-25, 2012. Utilizing research data, case studies, parallel workshops and group discussions, national and international experts will challenge the audience to explore new options with the goal of improving patient outcomes. For more information, go to: www.ccfcme.org/pm2012
This newsletter is sent to over 8,000 subscribers every month to keep you informed of what is happening in the fields of hospice, grief and bereavement, and caregiving, as well as what's new at HFA. Privacy Statement: In no case will we share e-mail addresses. See the full text of HFA's Privacy Policy.
This newsletter is published by Hospice Foundation of America
Amy Tucci, President and CEO
http://www.hospicefoundation.org
© Hospice Foundation of America 2011
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