Hospice Foundation of America
E-Newsletter
Volume 8, Issue 3
March 2008
http://www.hospicefoundation.org
March 2008
In this issue:
- Focus on: Interview with Dr. J. William Worden
- What's New @ HFA
- Online Education Available via Hospice Education Network
- What's New @ HFA's Hospice and Caregiving Blog
- Living With Grief: Children and Adolescents
- Email Your Questions Now for the Live Teleconference
- Host a Downlink Site!
- Upcoming Conferences and Educational Oppotunities
Message from David Abrams, President
We're sure you notice the new design for our e-newsletter. In response to reader comments, we've worked to make the information more readable and accessible. Please let us know if you agree by emailing enews@hospicefoundation.org
Remember that if you are interested in attending a site on April 16 for our 15th annual National Bereavement Teleconference, Living With Grief®: Children and Adolescents, you can find a site near you here. This list is updated on a weekly basis so if there isn't a site near you, please check back in a few days.
HFA is grateful to the organizations who help sponsor the teleconference, especially the Foundation for End-of-Life Care, a not-for-profit organization established by VITAS Healthcare Corporation, was created to improve end-of-life care for individual patients and their families, while supporting fundamental societal change.
Hospice Foundation of America is also grateful for the cooperation of:
- The Adventist Communications Network
- The Association for Death Education and Counseling
- The Compassionate Friends
- Dignity Memorial Funeral, Cremation, and Cemetery Services
- The National Association of Social Workers
- Department of Veteran Affairs Employee Education System
I encourage you to learn more about the important work that each of these groups
is doing in the fields of end-of-life care and bereavement.
Focus on: Interview with Dr. J. William Worden
HFA is pleased that Dr. William Worden, a leading expert in the field of children and bereavement, will be a member of HFA's teleconference panel in April. Here, Dr. Worden discusses his groundbreaking work as the co-director of Harvard's Child Bereavement Study, based at Massachusetts General Hospital; the changes he has seen in the field since he began the study with co-director Dr. Phyllis Silverman; and creative strategies he has found that can benefit children and adolescents dealing with grief and loss.
What's New @ HFA
This spring, HFA will release two new special issues of Journeys, a newsletter to help in bereavement. The first new special issue, "Introduction to Hospice," will address choosing hospice, the challenges of facing loss, opportunities for reminiscence, and self-care for caregivers. Another special issue, "Spring Holidays," will focus on grief surrounding Mother's Day, Easter and Passover, Father's Day and graduation. Look for these special issues to be available in April 2008.
HFA is now making individual book chapters available for online purchase. The chapters are available in PDFs for a low cost of $2.50 each and may be downloaded to your home or office computer. We have put chapters from the last three books online: Living with Grief: Before and After the Death (2007); Living with Grief: Pain Management at the End of Life (2006), and Living with Grief: Ethical Dilemmas at the End of Life (2005). You can read descriptions of each chapter before purchasing.
Online Education Available via Hospice Education Network
This week HFA and the Hospice Education Network (HEN) are launching a new continuing education collaborative making HFA's edited teleconference programs available to hospices and others who work in grief-related fields. Certified for one-hour of continuing education credit for more than 16 professional boards, HFA's edited Living with Grief programs (11 courses total) are now available via streaming video to professionals and volunteers who are interested in furthering their education. Among the programs that are available for continuing education is HFA's award-winning Alzheimer's disease program, as well as programs on coping with public tragedy, ethical dilemmas at the end of life, pain management, and sudden loss. HEN offers one year subscriptions to individual Living with Griefprograms or a special discount for all eleven programs. The one, low, affordable subscription price includes 24/7 access to the program(s) for a hospice or other group's entire staff and volunteers as well as HEN's administrative tools that provide tracking, monitoring and documentation resources. In addition, the subscription price includes continuing education credits for nurses, social workers, funeral service workers and additional professional boards. For more information, go to www.hospiceonline.com or contact info@hospiceonline.com or call 508-778-0008.
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:
- Practicing Acceptance for the Hospice Professional
- Factors to Consider in the Use of Antibiotics in Dementia Patients
- But That's Not How it Happened on TV!
Living With Grief: Children and Adolescents
HFA's 15th annual National Bereavement Teleconference, Living With Grief: Children and Adolescents, will be broadcast Wednesday, April 16. HFA's 2008 Teleconference will focus on the experience of grieving children and adolescents and the ways that hospice professionals, teachers and school administrators, grief counselors, funeral directors, and parents can best support these populations as they cope with loss and grief. The program and newly published book will focus on the most current theories and practices in this area, and as always will combine academic research with hands-on ideas for use in hospice support groups and other settings.
This year veteran Site Coordinators and returning audience members will notice a significant format change to the Living with Grief® program. The program will be the same length but will have two segments instead of the usual four. Each panelist in that segment will remain for the entirety of the 70-minute segment, allowing for more time to thoroughly discuss the topics. As we did last year, viewer questions submitted before the teleconference will be incorporated into the live program.
Why did HFA make these changes? We listened to site
coordinators and viewers, who answered our post-teleconference surveys.
While the program receives high marks year after year, many viewers
have told us that they would appreciate an opportunity to hear
panelists in more depth. We hope the extended discussion time will
improve the program.
Email Your Questions Now for the Live Teleconference!
Teleconference site coordinators and/or attendees are encouraged to email their grief-related questions for the Living with Grief panelists to griefquestions@hospicefoundation.org. Questions will be accepted until April 1. Selected questions will be posed to panelists by the moderator during the program. Names and organizations will be used unless otherwise specified. Please keep your questions limited to the subject of grief. There will not be a call-in number during the teleconference in an effort to expand panel discussion time.
Host a Downlink Site
If you haven't done so before, HFA encourages you to consider hosting a downlink site for the 2008 teleconference. It's not too late! Read some FAQs about the teleconference to learn about the benefits and the technical requirements of hosting. Please contact us at telecon@hospicefoundation.org if you have any questions or need more information. Please Note: The Site Coordinator registration form is available from a link on the homepage of our website, or directly here.REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.
This year, you can register and pay the materials fee online with a credit card. Alternatively, you may download the application from HFA's website and mail it to us with a check, money order, or credit card to our Washington, DC address. After we receive your registration and materials payment, you will receive a detailed Site Coordinator's Manual in the mail and a password to access teleconference materials on our website.
Upcoming Conferences and Educational Opportunities
March is National Professional Social Workers Month. The theme, "Building on Strengths," signifies the connections that social workers provide between the areas from which people draw their strength - home, health, family, friends, and communities.
Registration is now open
for The Association for Death Education and Counseling's (ADEC) 30th Annual Conference, "Global Mourning--Death Among and Beyond Ourselves." The conference will take place
in Montreal April 30--May 3. Keynote speakers include Kim Phuc, Stephen Lewis, and
Leila M. Gupta.
The International Death, Grief and Bereavement Conference will take place June 1-4 in LaCrosse, WI. The conference will focus on Sudden and Traumatic Death. Registration is open now, with a discounted rate available before April 18.
This newsletter is sent to more than 7,600 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
David Abrams, President; Amy Tucci, CEO
http://www.hospicefoundation.org
Board of Directors: Thomas Spulak, Chair; David Abrams; Thomas E. Bryant, MD, JD;
Myra MacPherson; Priscilla Perry, Vice Chair; Patricia Spulak
© Hospice Foundation of America 2008
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