April and May 2005

The next Respecting Choices Advance Care Planning Course for Facilitators will be held May 5, from 8:00 - 4:00, and May 6 from 8:00 - 2:30 at Rhodes College.

Respecting Choices is a premier, internationally known advance care planning program.

You’ll learn

- To apply advance care planning facilitation skills to assist people in understanding how their own values and needs shape the choices they make for future medical care.

- To motivate and educate individuals and community groups to accept personal responsibility to reflect, discuss and decide what medical treatments they would or would not want should they be unable to make their own decisions

- To facilitate communication of an individual’s views and choices with physicians, family members and friends.

- To clarify the legal, medical and ethical issues in advance care planning.

Tuition is $100. For registration contact Maureen Schafer at 577-7268 or Jane Owen at 722-8782.

The next Mid-South Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition meeting will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 P.M. on Tuesday, May 3, at the Church Health Center's Hope and Healing facility at 1115 Union Avenue. The building is in back of the UT Family Practice, which faces Union. You turn into Family Practice from Union and drive around to the back parking lot. You can also enter from the back on Eastmoreland.

Because many people come to these meetings directly from work, we try to make sure to have food available. If you plan to bring something, please e-mail Dan at [email protected] to let him know what you will be bringing. (This is an important request, as we try to balance what food we know is coming with whatever else may need to be brought.)

Our speaker will be Erskine Gillespie of the Mid-South Transplant Foundation, Inc. Mr. Gillespie will talk with us about the work of his organization and about organ donation.

Agenda:

1. Food and fellowship

2. Guest Speaker: Erskine Gillespie

3. Introduction of the community attending

4. Summary review of April meeting Mary Ann Capocaccia

5. Items introduced by the community to be added to the agenda

6. Reports:

* Communications Paul Mosteller/Dan Rojecwicz/Diana Dralle/Wendy Santee
* Speakers Bureau Dee Flood/Jane Owen
* Faith Group Ed Norris/Wanda Jamison/Mike Davis/Christopher Church
* Nursing Home Initiative Mary Ann Capocaccia/Christopher Church
* Caring Connections Wendy Santee

Update on April Community Meeting

Our April program was presented by Dr. Seth Kaufman, of the West Clinic, who spoke on the topic of ethical wills. Ethical wills, which are not legal documents, address what a legal will cannot. Ethical wills are a way to share your values, blessings, life's lessons, hopes and dreams for the future, love, and forgiveness with your family, friends, and community.

Communications Committee: Paul Mosteller reported that the Communications Committee has developed and finalized a list of names of organizations to whom we will send announcements about presentations our Speakers Bureau is available to do. Dan Rojecwicz has been in contact with Bill Bannister about doing an audio public service announcement (PSA) on CD for us to distribute to the radio stations. Diana Dralle, of Crossroads Hospice, is working on thank you notes, stationery, and publicity material, including a brochure and business cards. Odyssey Hospice has donated a display board for the display Diana is developing.

Speakers Bureau: The Speakers Bureau has begun doing presentations on advance care planning. Speakers should send a report of each presentation to Emily, who will keep up with numbers that can be used to a) create a record our accomplishments, b) include in grant progress reports to the Durham Foundation, and c) document community needs for future funding requests. A Speakers Bureau meeting has been scheduled from 8:00 to 9:00 in the large conference room on the 27th floor of the Clark Tower. The MCCC has been invited to set up a table at a festival to be held at Wanda Jamison's church, Olivet Fellowship Baptist, from 9:00 to 2:00 on this Saturday, May 7. If anyone is interested in helping out with that table, please e-mail Wanda at [email protected] or Emily at [email protected] .

Durham Grant: We are funded by the Durham Foundation to present programs for older adults and caregivers of older adults; at least six of these presentations must be in nursing homes. We will be using, in part, the Caring Conversations material from the Center on Practical Bioethics for the nursing home inservices. That material has now arrived. The Mid-South Biomedical Ethics Center will soon begin to be available to do nursing home consultation, with the hope of beginning to develop ethics committees in local nursing homes. Mary Ann Capocaccia, Christopher Church, and Emily Fox-Hill will be presenting to the Tennessee Health Care Association on May 18 about services of the Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition and the Bioethics Consortium that will be available to the nursing homes.

The new Tennessee Health Care Decisions Act may be accessed on the Tennessee State website at http://www2.state.tn.us/health/Boards/AdvanceDirectives/index.htm

Links found at that site include the following (including the new Tennessee advance directive forms):

* Advance Care Plan Form
* Appointment of Health Care Agent Form
* Physician Order for Scope of Treatment (UDNR)
* Health Care Decision Act of 2004
* Rules and Regulations for Health Care Facilities
* Frequently Asked Questions About Advance Directives

Brochure and Tag Line Survey

As previously mentioned, Diana Dralle is working on Mid-South Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition brochure. There is one item yet to be finalized for that brochure, with which we are soliciting your assistance. We need to create and include a "tag line". Tag lines are the short, catchy slogans used in advertising, like Nike's "Just do it" or Coke's "It's the Real Thing." We have surveyed our board of directors and come up with the following suggestions:

# "Living with Dignity"
# "Living with Dignity, Dying in Comfort”
# "Living with Dignity, Dying in Comfort at the End of Life”
# “A Dignified Life Ends with Comfort”
# “Hospizarbeit und Bioethik - the Dignified Death”
# “The promise of a comfortable death adds dignity to life”
# “Life, Death, Dignity, Hope, Comfort”
# "Living and Giving Dignity and Comfort "
# “Hospizarbeit und Bioethik: Living with Dignity, Dying with Hope”
# "Quality of Life and Death"
# "Promoting Quality of Life and Death"
# "Promoting Quality of Living and Dying"
# "Providing Education On End of Life Choices. Know Your Options.....Take Control."
# "Providing Public Education On End of Life Choices. Know Your Options.....Take
Control."

You are invited to submit a tag line for consideration. Once we get everyone's suggestion, we will call for a vote on the top three, which will be market tested with various groups, including the library's LINChub listserver. Please send your suggestions to Emily at [email protected]

The Second Suicide and the Black Church Conference (Brochure available)

Thursday – Friday, June 9 – 10, 2005

A conference of awareness to inform about symptoms, risk factors and behavior patterns of suicide in the Black community.

Who should attend: Anyone. We are all affected by suicide.

Registration entitles participants to the workshops of their choice and luncheon on June 9th.

Rate schedule (per person):

Businesses/Professionals $50

Churches/Laypeople $35

Non-profit organizations $35

Students $25

Ask about scholarships.

The Healing Center

3885 Tchulahoma Road
Memphis, TN 38118

((901) 370-4673

7 (901) 370-5717

http://www.memphishealingcenter.com/

Thanks to Our Partners and Supporters

We wish to thank our three hospice partners for all their generous support!

Åú To Crossroads Hospice for providing air fare to the pre-conference Caring

Connections session at the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization's

Clinical Team Conference in Atlanta, for donating Diana Dralle's time and unique

talents to work on publicity materials, and for donating duplicating services for our

table for the May 7 festival at the Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church.

Åú To Methodist Alliance Hospice for providing lodging at the NHPCO Caring

Connections pre-conference session in Atlanta.

Åú To Odyssey Hospice for all of Paul Mosteller and Dan Rojecwicz' hard work on

publicity, including the creation of our new audio PSA, and for providing meeting

space for our April Faith Task Force meeting. Thanks, also, for the donation of a cell

phone for coalition use. (Callers can now reach the MCCC at 833-5631.)

We also wish to thank Wendy Santee for providing the connection that has allowed us to have a professional quality PSA recorded. Wendy also recently made it possible for Emily Fox-Hill to travel to Boston to meet with Dr. George Annas, chairman of the Department of Health Law at Boston University and with the Tom Clairmont, CEO of Lakes Region General Hospital in Laconia, New Hampshire, and with Gloria Thorington, RN, their Director of Quality Control. As a result of her mother's end-of-life experience, Wendy is in the process of creating PatientDriven.com. That experience motivated Wendy to begin working to help other patients become involved in health care issues and to educate themselves about what to expect at end of life and how to be a better educated consumers of health care.