This conference, which is a follow-up to the Network's first all-day conference in December, 1996 entitled Whose Life Is It Anyway? Religious/Spiritual Values and Clinical Ethics in Long-Term Care, will address some of the more practical, hands-on approaches to spirituality in which long-term care professionals confront in their daily work. This is in response to the feedback we received following the first conference. Spiritual support to residents/patients should not be limited strictly to pastoral care professionals. Other members of the interdisciplinary team should also be able to respond to resident/patient spiritual concerns.
With this in mind, the conference will also feature three distinct role plays involving a nurse, a social worker, and a chaplain intereacting with a resident. Issues such as terminal illness, anger, reconciliation, and finding value and meaning in one's life will be discussed. This is a new endeavor for one of the Network's conferences (traditionally there has been a panel discussion) and the planning committee is excited about it. We hope you will be, too. With the renewed emphasis being placed on the need for spiritual assessments in long-term care, this is certainly one conference you can't afford to miss! Conference brochures are being sent out to all on our mailing list. Parking will be made available and lunch provided. If you need more information or have any questions, please call Susan at 718-796-2444.
A special thanks to the members of the conference planning committee for all their hard work, and to our sponsores, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor Foundation, Inc., The HealthCare Chaplaincy, and Lippincott, Williams, & Wilkins.
The Board is starting to make plans for next year's conferences. If you have any ideas for topics or if you would like your facility to host one of the conferences, please call the office.
A tally of the evaluations from the seminar in September on Starting an Ethics Committee indicates that the seminar was not only very successful but addressed a real need. Thanks to Dr. Nichols, Rabbi Kronick, and Mary Devlin for giving so generously of their time to conduct this seminar. Thanks, too, the Fairview Health Care Center in Queens for being such a gracious host.
At the June conference held at the Hebrew Home for the Aged on Ethical Issues of Palliative Care and Pain Management in the Nursing Home, 23 professionals signed up to be on the Palliative Care Task Force which would develop a palliative care model for long-term care facilities. Board members, Ellen Bartoldus and Paul Brenner, are the co-chairs. As the task force gets under way, more information will follow.
Thanks to the talents and creativity of our Ethics Network Coordinator, the Network now has a home page. If you are on the Internet, why not take a look. The URL is https://www.angelfire.com/on/NYCLTCethics
network/index.html. The NYCLTCEN web page contains information about the Network's upcoming activities, including the December 7th conference. Other links will bring you to references on palliative care, and ethics committeees, as well as information about other conferences in the area. Our goal is to eventually publish the Ethics Network News on-line.
In the next few months, the Network will be conducting a telephone survey of nursing homes regarding the Network and ethics committees. We will need your help and cooperation. The survey wil be done by Sara Cross, an Honor's Student at the College of New Rochelle.
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