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AN INTIMATE IN-PERSON CONFERENCE
THIS ONE DAY CONFERENCE IS FOR ANYONE WORKING IN END OF LIFE CARE EITHER AS A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL, DEATH DOULAS OR OTHERS WORKING OUTSIDE THE HEALTHCARE TEAM, PRE AND POST DEATH.
This day will provide opportunities to learn about new approaches to how we engage and the conversations we have with clients, patients, families, caregivers, doctors and others in the healthcare team.
Conversations that alleviate fear and allow for personal agency, advocacy, and active engagement in goals for care, advance care planning and decisions that need to be made at end of life.
Let's all get comfortable with the uncomfortable!
5 INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS who are CHANGING THE CONVERSATIONS
BARBARA KARNES, RN - BK BOOKS
Award Winning End of Life Educator, Award Winning Nurse, NHPCO Hospice Innovator Award Winner 2018 & 2015 International Humanitarian Woman of the Year.
Barbara Karnes, RN, is an internationally respected speaker, educator, author, and thought leader on matters of end of life. She is a renowned authority on the dying process and a leading educator for families, healthcare professionals, and the community at large. Barbara's award winning DVDs and books about death and dying are changing lives - in this country and around the world. In her work, Barbara compassionately explains stages of the dying process, living with a life threatening illness, pain management, and how people grieve. She explains how important it is to take care of yourself as a caregiver and offers guidelines for professionals.
Barbara has held both clinical and leadership positions, including staff nurse, clinical supervisor, and executive director at Hospices and Home Health Care agencies. Since 1994, Barbara
has traveled speaking about end of life issues and the stages of dying atnational and state hospice and palliative care organization conferences, state associations, colleges, nursing schools, hospitals, and hospices.
She is the expert that hospice and other healthcare professionals
count on to teach them how to explain the dying process to families.
Barbara has dedicated the last 40 years of her life to the education, care, and support of dying people and their loved ones. The most useful and important things that she's learned along the way have been distilled into her materials..
DR. KAREN WYATT, END OF LIFE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Karen Wyatt is the bestselling author of the book 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying, which contains stories of patients she cared for as a hospice doctor and the spiritual lessons she learned from them at the end of their lives.
Dr. Wyatt also hosts End-of-Life University Podcast, which features conversations with experts who work in all aspects of end-of-life care. She is widely regarded as a thought-leader in the effort to transform the way we care for our dying in the U.S.
In addition, she is valued for her application of spiritual principles
to illness and healthcare and teaches that in order to live life
fully we must each overcome our fear of death and embrace
the difficulties that life brings us.
JENNIFER O'BRIEN, MSOD & HOSPICE DR'S WIDOW
Jennifer O’Brien helps people talk about caregiving and end of life. She encourages compassionate, real conversation through her book, The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal, where she shares her story of caregiving through collages and writings. After years of caring for people with serious illness as a physician, Jennifer’s husband, Bob Lehmberg, was diagnosed with a stage IV, metastatic cancer. But caregiving for the man who had made a 40-year career of caregiving as a physician was not easy.
When Jennifer’s husband was diagnosed and later after he died, she turned to what had brought her comfort for years—art journaling. She documented and depicted the raw, honest, beautiful and exhausting reality of caregiving through collage, tableaus, notes and observations. She included much of the wisdom and perspective she learned from her husband in his years as a physician.
When the book was just a stack of pages, she took it to a friend who had just been diagnosed with a rare, advanced bladder cancer. After reading the book and knowing his own prognosis, he said, “You need to give this to my wife. She needs to understand what is ahead and feel supported as my caregiver.” After seeing how much that stack of pages helped them in his final months, Jennifer knew that what she had created might help others.
Having been a practice management consultant and educator to
physicians for 30+ years, an executive administrator for two large medical practices, in administration at three major academic medical centers, the wife and now widow of a physician, Jennifer has a unique and thorough understanding of healthcare. Still, with all of this experience, caregiving for her dying husband was both the greatest honor and challenge of her life.
Now Jennifer works to help caregivers feel supported while caring for others and taking care of themselves..
LISA PAHL, LCSW HOSPICE SOCIAL WORKERS & CO-CREATOR THE DEATH DECK
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with over fifteen years of experience in hospice and emergency medicine, Lisa helps people cope with illness, dying, and grief.
With a passionate belief that peace at the end begins with meaningful conversations over time, Lisa engages people in talking about and preparing for this important stage of life. She feels the more we can engage in talking about this difficult subject, the more prepared and ultimately comforted we will be when we reach the end of life.
When friends say, “Lisa, how is it that every time you are around we talk about death?” She takes it as the ultimate compliment. It’s her passion, and she's honored to be able to open up these conversations and put people at ease.
Since obtaining her Master’s in Social Work from The University of Michigan, she's embraced a challenging and rewarding social work career. She has worked within community mental health, domestic violence, and trauma before moving to Emergency Medicine and Hospice, where her true passion lies.
Accompanying Individuals and their families through their final days has taught her innumerable lessons about truly appreciating life.
LORI LOCICERO, FREELANCE WRITER & CO-CREATOR THE DEATH DECK
Lori LoCicero is a freelance writer and co-creator of The Death Deck. A creative storyteller and eternal optimist, Lori combines her personal stories of loss with her innate sense of humor to write about life and talk about death.
Her experience with hospice and the death of her husband Joe to pancreatic cancer was the catalyst for creating The Death Deck: a lively and humorous card game that inspires meaningful conversations on what matters most.
A UCLA graduate with a long list of titles including director, producer, and author, She is currently completing a memoir about personal loss (Clouds Far Behind Me) and shares personal stories about grief and widowhood on her website (lorilocicero.com) to help others travel their paths.
A believer in Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG), she seeks to shed light on this emerging field of psychology and plant seeds of hope in others when in darkness.
She also has a wicked sense of humor—which helps in balancing
all of life’s many challenges.
our emcee & panel moderator
Christa Ovenell is a licensed funeral director, an end-of-life doula, and the founder of Death’s Apprentice Education & Planning.
She holds a Master's degree in Higher Education from the University of British Columbia and is proud to have been featured in local and national press in her quest to talk all about the one thing most people don't feel comfortable talking about at all!
You can find her via her website (www.deathsapprentice.ca), on Instagram (@deathsapprentice.ca), or in various bodies of water as she indulges in her favourite new pastime: cold plunging!
THE AGENDA
THE MORNING BEGINS AT 7:45 AM
CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
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WELCOME & OPENING CEREMONY
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KEYNOTE PANEL
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BREAKOUT PRESENTATIONS
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LUNCH - HAVE A BITE, SIT ON THE PATIO, ENJOY THE SCENERY
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BREAKOUT PRESENTATIONS
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CLOSING CEREMONY & RITUAL
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MIX & MINGLE COCKTAIL RECEPTION - TIME TO RELAX
MIX & MINGLE ON THE PATIO WHILE YOU DRINK IN THE BEAUTIFUL SURROUNDINGS
GATHER WITH ALL THE DELEGATES & HAVE A PERSONAL CHAT WITH OUR SPEAKERS
ENJOY CHEF PREPARED CUISINE MADE FROM FRESH LOCAL INGREDIENTS
coffee and stretch breaks will occur throughout the day
THE DAY ENDS AT 8:00 PM
breakout presentation #1
SERIOUSLY, LET'S TALK ... about Death with clients, patients and the people who love them
with Lisa Pahl LCSW & Lori LoCicero, Freelance Writer
In this intimate workshop, learn from The Death Deck creators Lori LoCicero and Lisa Pahl how to initiate conversations about death and dying with individuals approaching end-of-life and the people who support them.
Lori will use storytelling to share wisdom learned from caring for her late husband, Joe. She will provide examples of topics that she wishes they had discussed prior to Joe’s diagnosis and soon thereafter.
Lisa will provide tools from her role as a Hospice/Emergency Medicine Social Worker to guide patients and caregivers on how to delicately handle these sensitive discussions, including those reluctant to speak openly about death.
The workshop will include how to use The Death Deck and their new product, the EOL (end of life)Deck, to help facilitate these valuable conversations.
breakout presentation #2
SERIOUSLY, LET'S TALK ... to Physicians Effectively About Death and Dying
with Dr. Karen Wyatt, End of Life University
We know its important for people to discuss their end-of-life preferences with their healthcare provider, but those conversations often don't take place.
Physicians are too busy or distracted to bring up the subject and patients don't know how to initiate the conversation.
In this session we'll learn about the obstacles to end-of-life discussions in the medical setting and how to empower patients to take responsibility for their own wishes for the end of life and engage in better conversations with their medical providers.
breakout presentation #3
SERIOUSLY, LET'S TALK ... and team up with Family Caregivers
with Jennifer O'Brien, MSOD & Hospice Dr's Widow
This educational session combines data, resources, and story in a way that will help end-of-life professionals have a meaningful and empathic relationship with family caregiver(s).
Family/uncompensated caregivers are instrumental with nearly every patient who has a serious condition and faces end of life. Recognizing their challenges, capabilities, and reality will be an asset to your professional practice. We will identify the many resources available so that you may share them to enhance family caregivers’ efficacy and wellness, thereby enriching your professional care and services.
In addition to being the one who spends the most time with the dying person, the family caregiver is:
· a/the decision maker in contracting with end-of-life care professionals.
· an integral part of the care and service process.
· may need bereavement counselling or after loss services.
· settles the final balance.
· in a position to make referrals and give reviews.
Jennifer effectively combines the facts of family caregiving with unique insights, experience, and deliberation that will benefit healthcare professionals across every point in the care continuum and at every level in the educational spectrum from student to seasoned professional.
breakout presentation #4
SERIOUSLY, LET'S TALK ... about You, Your Sense of Purpose, and Your Selfcare
with Barbara Karnes, RN, Award Winning Educator and Author
Working with end of life presents unique challenges. Our medical model teaches death is a failure. Our medical model treats diseases that people have.
End of life care addresses the person that happens to have a disease. End of Life care addresses the mind, emotions and soul in addition to the physical.
Working in the end of life arena seems to have a calling to it. A personal, inner NEED to work with end of life situations. Let’s explore where this drive, this need comes from. Let’s look in that place within ourselves to see what brought us to where we are.
Now that we are in this special work, this work outside of the medical model and outside the “norms’ how do we keep ourselves healthy. How do we not take on the heaviness of all of our patient’s dying?
TSAWWASSEN SPRINGS, TSAWWASSEN BC
IN - PERSON
LIMITED REGISTRATION - REGISTER NOW!
AN INTIMATE AND UNIQUE CONFERENCE OPPORTUNITY!
PERSONAL AND ENGAGING CONVERSATIONS WITH
5 INTERNATIONAL SPEAKERS!