The Collaborative for End of Life Care of Westchester and Southern New York sponsored its third interdisciplinary and interfaith palliative care conference on Nov. 13 in White Plains, N.Y., featuring keynote speaker Dr. Joseph J. Fins, prominent medical ethicist at New York-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center and recently elected president of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. The title of the conference was, “A Team of Partners in Palliative Care: Challenges and Choices in Ethics of Care at End of Life.” The conference was co-sponsored by 40 public and private agencies including the Westchester Women’s Bar Association, the Westchester Public Private Partnership for Aging Services, the Pace Women’s Justice Center and the Fordham Ravazzin Center on Aging. The conference drew more than 450 professionals from the fields of nursing, social work, law, medicine, chaplaincy and pastoral care, and other disciplines, and has been nominated for the Westchester County Public Health Service Award.
With health care at the top of the national agenda, the elder boom, and continuing advances in the medical community’s ability to prolong life, a thorough discussion of the ethics, challenges and issues posed by end-of-life care has never been as timely. Conference attendees learned about some of the medical, ethical, legal and practical issues surrounding end-of-life care. Dr. Fins’ opening keynote, “Balancing the Right to Die and the Right to Care: Neuroethics Meets Palliative Care,” was received with wide enthusiasm. In discussing the challenges of dealing with patients in varied states of consciousness, Dr. Fins focused on the goals of care planning for each and every patient. Dr. Fins described the trajectories that sometimes occur in cases of minimally conscious states and the care needs of such patients. In all cases, Dr. Fins stressed the call to professionals to provide an ethic of care that is patient and family centered, and advances the goals of care for the patient. Dr. Frederick J. Wertz, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Fordham University, was a discussant in the morning keynote session, and gave context to Dr. Fins’ remarks in the tradition of the human sciences. Dr. Wertz emphasized the interdisciplinary backgrounds represented in the discussions and the central importance of the humanistic perspective in giving meaning to the palliative ethic of care. Mary Beth Morrissey, Esq., MPH, health care attorney and gerontological social work researcher with the Fordham Ravazzin Center on Aging, was the second discussant, representing the humanistic legal perspective. She provided a legislative update including provisions on palliative care in the federal health reform bills, and generally, a legal framework of reference for decisions that concern us when we talk about states of consciousness.
Dr. Fins’ keynote presentation was followed by a plenary session entitled, “Cultural Perspectives at the End of Life,” moderated by Joan Adams, LCSW, with presenters Karen Bullock, PhD, and Ernest Aguilar, PhD. In the afternoon, concurrent workshops were held on a variety of topics including psychosocial aspects of pain and suffering, bridging research and practice in caregiving, health care costs, complementary care and geriatric care, the challenges of hospital-based palliative care programs, and spirituality.
Dr. Mary Ann Quaranta Award
The first “Dr. Mary Ann Quaranta Award” was presented at the conference in honor of Dr. Mary Ann Quaranta, dean emerita of the Fordham Graduate School of Social Service and an honorary chair and founder of the conference. Dr. Quaranta, former president of the National Association of Social Workers, is credited with providing outstanding leadership in the field of aging.
About the Collaborative for End of Life Care:
The Collaborative for End of Life Care of Westchester and Southern New York is a consortium of over 40 public and private agencies, colleges and universities, home health, hospice, hospital and social services providers under the auspices of the Fordham Ravazzin Center on Aging, Pace Women’s Justice Center and the Westchester Public Private Partnership for Aging Services. The collaborative is dedicated to advancing understanding of end-of-life and palliative care issues. For more information, please contact Mary Beth Morrissey, Chair, at mamorrissey@fordham.edu.