Dr. Mildred Z. Solomon, president and CEO of The Hastings Center, and Dr. Nancy Berlinger, a Hastings research scholar, will address an audience of palliative care clinicians on end-of-life care and the role of spiritual care at the Garrison Institute on Sunday, Nov. 11 at 1:15 p.m.
In a talk entitled Authenticity in the Presence of Suffering: Staying Real in the Modern Health Care System, Solomon will identify both lingering barriers and new opportunities for enhancing quality care. She will address cultural barriers that often impede optimal care and ways to ensure that patients, whether grappling with a chronic condition or near the end of life, receive the social supports, opportunities for meaning, and symptom relief they deserve.
Berlinger’s talk, Practice Amid Uncertainty: Ethics Guidelines as a Resource for Palliative Care Professionals, will discuss The Hastings Center Guidelines for Decisions on Life-Sustaining Treatment and Care Near the End of Life, to be released in 2013.
This publication is an updated and expanded version of the landmark ethics guidelines produced by Hastings in 1987, which have provided the conceptual framework that has guided clinical decision-making for terminally ill patients in U.S. hospitals for the last 25 years. Berlinger, an author of the new guidelines, will also address professional self-care and the role of religion and spirituality in the care of seriously ill or dying patients.
Solomon’s and Berlinger’s talks will follow the Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium, a three-day event hosted by the Garrison Institute and the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, which features leading experts in palliative, hospice and contemplative care and exploring how these care techniques can improve healing and reduce suffering.
The Hastings Center, located at 21 Malcolm Gordon Road in Garrison, is a nonpartisan bioethics research institution dedicated to bioethics and the public interest since 1969. For more information, visit their website, thehastingscenter.org.
