Access to Care at the End of Life March 2

Duke University Medical Center
Monday, 14 February 2000

"Opening Doors: Access to Care at the End of Life," a half-day symposium on Thursday, March 2, celebrates the founding of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life. The event will examine key issues related to care of people at the end of life, particularly medical ethics, spiritual care and support models that are centered around the patient and his or her family.

Based at Duke Divinity School, the new institute is interdisciplinary in nature, international and national in scope, and involves a broad spectrum of departments and schools on campus, as well as other institutions, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Social Work and St. Christopher's Hospice in London, England, widely recognized as where the modern-day hospice movement began. From spiritual to medical perspectives, the institute looks at issues surrounding death and dying in our world today. It is particularly interested at what is meant by the notion of "caring" as a community.

Symposium speakers include Southern Methodist University medical ethicist William F. May, a lecturer on the role of religion in the patient-physician relationship; Project on Death in America director Dr. Kathleen M. Foley, an authority on pain and its management (particularly related to cancer); and Manhattan Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center nursing expert Nessa Coyle, whose work focuses on the effects of poorly controlled pain and other symptoms in cancer patients.

Also participating is Ira R. Byock, author of Dying Well and director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care Program. In addition, several Duke faculty members will be on hand, including:

• Stanley Hauerwas, professor of theological ethics and an expert on philosophy, political theory and Christianity;
• Karla Holloway, dean of humanities and social sciences, professor of English and African-American literature, and a scholar currently researching how African Americans deal with loss, death, burial and mourning;
• Institute director Dr. Keith G. Meador, professor of the practice of pastoral theology and medicine, and a psychiatrist on the faculties of the divinity and medical schools;
• Dr. James A. Tulsky, associate professor of medicine and an expert on palliative care and the ways in which doctors, patients and their families treat news of a terminal illness. Tulsky is associate director of the institute.

In addition, Arthur W. Frank, author of a groundbreaking book on narrating illness, The Wounded Storyteller, will take part. A medical sociologist, Frank studies ways in which patients, families, doctors and other caregivers often tell vastly different stories about the same illness, reflecting differing perspectives and experiences. A professor of sociology at the University of Calgary in Canada, he will be the featured speaker the day before (Wednesday, March 1) in a full-day Goodling lecture/seminar, "Witness, Truth and Faith: Exploring Narrative Ethics for Illness," sponsored by the Duke Divinity School. The event will be held from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. in Von Canon Hall. Reporters are invited.

Participants at both events are expected to be clergy, medical professionals and social service professionals from across the country.

For more information, or to contact Duke University Medical Center, see their website at: www.mc.duke.edu