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Gateway End-of-Life Coalition membership is open to individuals or agencies that support the mission and goals of the Gateway End-of-Life Coalition. Based in St. Louis, Missouri, our mission is to Promote High Quality End of Life Care for Patients and Their Families. We do that by educating the public, health care providers and students regarding optimal care for the maximum benefit of persons at end-of-life. We promote collaboration among health care providers, patients, family members, educators and organizations. We advocate for quality end-of-life care with policy makers.
With COVID-19, we’ve moved all our events to Zoom! We’ve had great feedback about them and hope you can join us at our next event:
Thursday, December 17th from 9 am to 10 am. “CE Presentation Proposal for Gateway End of Life Coalition” with presenters Kathryn Coccia, MM, MT-BC, and Andrew Dwiggins, M.A., MT-BC. Research supports the use of music therapy in hospice and palliative care to address physical, psychological, social, and spiritual goals—the four domains of “Total Pain.” In this presentation, you will learn about what music therapy is, and how to integrate music therapists into your patients’ treatment team to improve the quality of care they receive. Register here.
COVID-19 RESOURCES
Covid-19 has changed our lives. It’s also given us an opportunity to reflect and grow. Below are some resources that may assist or inspire you during this difficult time.
Printable Five Wishes Available Free
Because of the national emergency before us, Aging with Dignity has decided to take the unprecedented step of making the Five Wishes document available online to individuals at no cost. Use it for yourself. Use it for your parents, spouse, siblings, adult children, extended family, and friends. Just use it!
In this podcast, Dr. Karen Wyatt shares resources for surviving and thriving during the coronavirus quarantine. She discusses some important issues to consider regarding your own advance directives and those of your loved ones as we face a medical crisis that is unprecedented in our lifetimes. This is a difficult conversation to have but one that is of utmost importance right now.
Jennifer Moore Ballentine is the Executive Director of the California State University Shiley Institute for Palliative Care. In this communication, she offers considerations specifically for those who work in palliative care.
Respecting Choices Access to Open-Source Toolkit
People who are considered high-risk for coronavirus-related complications are feeling especially vulnerable, as are their loved ones. Building two decades of research and experience, Respecting Choices has developed a toolkit of resources that focus on Covid-19. The toolkit includes guidance for a conversation about treatment preferences before a medical crisis, to support specific treatment decisions in high-risk individuals and resources to support high-risk individuals and their agent/loved ones. We are making these tools freely available during this crisis and encourage you to distribute the resources widely.
Ariadne Lab’s Webinar: Information on Coronavirus
Ariadne Lab’s, Serious Illness Care Community of Practice hosts this webinar with the objectives to provide an overview of the Serious Illness Conversation Guide, a tool that may become more relevant in a variety of settings as a result of COVID-19, and to provide COVID-19-specific resources for serious illness care. Ariadne Labs is committed to saving lives & reducing suffering for patients everywhere. We aim to create simple, scalable solutions for critical moments at all stages of the health care journey.
Baue brings us this Hospice Foundation of America webinar: The COVID-19 pandemic is having a large impact on patients with serious illness, and creating especially difficult situations for nursing homes. Elaine Healy, MD, FACP, CMD and John Cagle, PhD, MSW discuss how this crisis is affecting hospice and end-of-life care in nursing homes and what strategies professionals might use to support families in facilitating intimacy and connection in the midst of shutdowns and quarantines.
VitalTalk is offering this playbook freely. Email it, link it, spread it around. Don’t hesitate to change the links so it works for your particular clinic or institution or system. Then help them improve it. Tell them what they missed, what didn’t work, where you got stuck. The next iteration could be better because of you.
SAVE THESE DATES:
Gateway Workshops: April 21?, August 18 and October 20 National Healthcare Decisions Day 2020: April 16 The Midwest Regional Conference on Palliative & End of Life Care: November 8-10 (St. Louis – Union Station)
