End-of-Life Conversation Ready on WIHI

Madge Kaplan writes:

The next WIHI broadcast — End-of-Life Care and How Communities Can Become “Conversation Ready” — will take place on Thursday, January 15, from 2 to 3 PM ET, and I hope you'll tune in.

Our guests will include:

• Jean Abbott, MD, MH, The Conversation Project, Boulder County; Faculty, Center for Bioethics and Humanity & Professor Emerita, Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado
• Diana Silvey, MA, Program Director, Winter Park Health Foundation
• Kimberly Flowers, MSW, LICSW, Senior Outreach Social Worker, Elder Services of the Merrimack Valley (Northeastern Massachusetts)
• Kate DeBartolo, National Field Manager, The Conversation Project, Institute for Healthcare Improvement

It doesn't necessarily “take a village” to have a conversation with loved ones about wishes for end-of-life care. But it can help to have others in the community to turn to for ideas, resources, and support — especially if the “kitchen table” conversation with important people in one’s life isn’t happening so readily. Sometimes it’s easier to start this conversation with peers who get together once a week at the community center. Or with a rabbi or minister. Or, initially, with perfect strangers who’ve started to meet at the local library to talk about death and dying. 

With an aging population, and too many people not dying as they’d choose, community groups all across the US are creating more ways and places for people of all ages, and states of health, to articulate their end-of-life care preferences, and to make sure their preferences are known and respected by loved ones and local health care alike. We’re going to look at some efforts underway in Winter Park, Florida; Boulder County, Colorado; and in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, on the January 15 WIHI: End-of-Life Care and How Communities Can Become “Conversation Ready.”

For many community programs, the resources offered by The Conversation Project, including the Starter Kit, are often foundational. And, as you’ll learn on this WIHI, for a community to become Conversation Ready, meeting people where they are in their lives (literally and figuratively) is key. This could be at a homeless shelter, the Elks club, or a class at a community college. There are no right or wrong answers when it comes to people’s end-of-life care wishes; and, as you’ll hear from our terrific panel on the January 15 WIHI, they’d like there to be no wrong doors, including those of health care providers, for having a discussion that couldn’t be more important to us all. Join in and tell us about efforts in your own communities on the January 15 WIHI.

You can enroll for the broadcast here. We'd also appreciate it if you would spread the word about the show via Twitter.