June and July 2005

All, as we announced last week, the next Mid-South Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition community meeting will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 on Tuesday, July 5 at Crossroads Hospice, located at 1634 Sycamore View Road. Emily Fox-Hill will give a slide presentation on the new Caring Connections program, which builds on the Rallying Points work. Caring Connections is sponsored by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

This month's meeting will not be a potluck. Rather, food will be provided courtesy of Crossroads. Take I-40 towards Nashville, exit on Sycamore View going north, and pass Shelby Oaks Drive. On the right just past Shelby Oaks, you will see a Cajun Catfish restaurant. Crossroads is at the back in the group of the offices behind Cajun Catfish, which is located on Sycamore view, between I-40 and Summer Avenue.

July Community Meeting Agenda

1. Food and fellowship

2. Speaker: Emily Fox-Hill, PhD, RN

3. Introduction of the community attending

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

5. Reports:

* Communications Paul Mosteller/Diana Dralle
* Speakers Bureau Dee Flood/Jane Owen/Emily Fox-Hill
* Faith Group Ed Norris/Wanda Jamison/Tom Momberg
* Nursing Home Initiative Mary Ann Capocaccia/Emily Fox-Hill

(There will be no August Community Meeting.)

Minutes of the May MCCC Community Meeting

Program: The June program was presented by Jane Owen, Co-Chairman of our Speakers Bureau. As always, Jane's presentation was compelling, drawing on her experiences as a critical care and palliative care nurse. She talked about clinical issues that are important to consider during end-of-life planning, including CPR, nutrition and hydration, ventilators, and pain control. This presentation may be counted as a training activity by individuals wishing to be certified members of the MCCC Speakers Bureau. However, due to the limited timeframe of the June meeting, the training for those who have not attended other Speakers Bureau meetings cannot be considered as complete. Ed Norris videotaped Jane's talk for those who were unable to attend. You may e-mail Ed at [email protected]
Speakers Bureau Report: Currently, certified members of the MCCC Speakers Bureau include Jim Dennis, Mary Ann Capocaccia, Diana Dralle, Dee Flood, Emily Fox-Hill, Susan Hirsch, Wanda Jamison, Jane Owen, Dan Rojecwicz, and Wyvonia Woods-Harris.

Since February, 2005, the MCCC Speakers Bureau has made presentations to approximately 600 persons. The presentations were made to the following groups: the Catholic Diocese Ministry To The Sick, Town Village Retirement Community, Mid-South Council on Aging, Memphis Association of Healthcare Quality, Porter Leath’s Foster Grandparents Program volunteers, Frayser Family Counseling Center’s Comprehensive Counseling Network, Tennessee Society of Patient Advocates, a Baptist Hospital seminar, Allenbrooke Long-term Care Center staff, Memphis Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center staff, the Tennessee Health Care Association, MIFA’s Interfaith Housing Program residents, Friends For Life's Wellness University, West TN Family Solutions, St. Francis' Senior Class, the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, the Geriatric Education Center Consortium of Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Memphis Healthy Churches, Christ Missionary Baptist Church (Mickey Drive), Mount Vernon Baptist Church Westwood, the Church of the Holy Name, Union Valley Baptist Church, and St. Anne Catholic Church Senior Daytime Group. In addition, we have taken a display to three health fairs, held at Olivet Fellowship Baptist Church, Shiloh Baptist Church, and Carriage Court independent living facility.

Thanks to a grant from the H. W. Durham Foundation, Mary Ann Capocaccio and Emily Fox-Hill are developing educational materials for use with nursing home staff members to help them a) become more sensitive to the EoL concerns of residents and families and b) gain tools to help residents and families complete the advance care planning process. Sessions are also available for nursing home family councils and resident councils. Staff sessions have been for the Jewish Home and for the Family Council of St. Francis Nursing Home and residents of St. Peter Manor.

The MCCC is also working in collaboration with the Mid-South Biomedical Ethics Center (MBEC), with whom we are partnered, to address end-of-life issues in the nursing homes. In May, Emily Fox-Hill, Mary Ann Capocaccia, and Christopher Church, chairman of MBEC, spoke at a Tennessee Health Care Association meeting about the new Tennessee Health Care Decisions Act and the newly adopted state advance directive forms, and about the services available to nursing homes through the MBEC and MCCC. Due to new regulations from credentialing bodies, nursing homes will now be required to develop some mechanism for making ethical decisions. Homes may opt to create ethics committees or to contract with professional consultants for advice on ethical issues. The MBEC is offering to help the nursing homes set up ethics committees. MBEC held an introductory workshop and luncheon on today, June 30, 2005, to introduce nursing home leaders to the concept of ethics committees and to explain the services that the MBEC will be offering. Nursing home representatives were told about the MCCC’s Speakers Bureau and about the staff inservice training that is now available to them through our H. W. Durham Foundation grant. Facilities that were represented included High Point Health and Rehabilitation, Court Manor, Overton Park Nursing Home, and the Memphis Jewish Home.

Communications Group Report: Dan Rojecwicz of Odyssey Hospice recently sent out 17 CDs containing our newly recorded public service announcement to the various radio stations identified by the Communications Group. We have high hopes that as these spots begin to air, we will start to receive inquiries regarding the MCCC and requests for presentations by our Speakers Bureau.

Faith Group Report: Ed Norris reported that Dr. Christopher Church, Professor of philosophy and religion at Baptist College of Health Sciences, had presented two lectures on the tenets of various world religions, particularly as they relate to end-of-life care. Faiths covered were Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. The plan is that, in the future, Dr. Church will also address all major Christian denominations, along with other faiths practiced in Memphis and the surrounding area. His first two lectures have been videotaped. We hope to take his notes and put them together into a booklet that will be marketed with the DVD, with the profits going to the MSCC and to the MBEC, which Dr. Church chairs.

On this Thursday, July 7, the first Caring Conversations Training Day for Faith Communities in Memphis will be held from 8:30 A.M. to 3:30 P.M. at Trezevant Manor, located at 177 North Highland. There are a limited number of slots still available for this free training, which will be conducted by members of the MCCC.
The Caring Conversations material was created by the Center for Practical Bioethics (CPB) (www.practicalbioethics.org) in Kansas City, Missouri. CPB was the Mid-Western Regional Resource Center for the Rallying Points Program. MCCC board member, the Reverend Tom Momberg, Associate Rector of the Church of the Holy Communion, is coordinating this training. Tom was trained as a Caring Conversations trainer while working as a chaplain for a Kansas retirement community and used the Caring Conversations materials with his own parents.

Caring Conversations helps individuals and their families share meaningful conversation while making practical preparations for end-of-life decisions.

* We are — each of us — entitled to a good death with pain and symptoms under control. Death should not devastate individuals and families financially or emotionally.
* A 1995 study of 10,000 dying people found that most of us fear dying in pain and in isolation. Americans have long searched for ways to improve the dying process, but until recently, most attempts to make dying easier and more natural have focused on completing a legal document called an advance directive.
* Studies have now shown that having an advance care directive is not always enough to ensure that a patient's wishes will be honored. In fact, two-thirds of attending physicians studied did not know that the patient had an advance care directive document.

Caring Conversations is endorsed by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (www.nhpco.org) and is a recommended resource by AARP and Bill Moyers' outreach materials for his PBS series, On Our Own Terms.

The goals of Caring Conversations:

· To focus advance care planning on conversations with family and friends

· To provide community education

· To educate healthcare providers who participate in advance care planning

· To help families advocate on behalf of those who can no longer speak for themselves

· To ensure that the wishes of those near the end of life are honored

If you would like to attend this event and learn how to use the Caring Conversations program to help yourself, your loved ones or members of your faith community make these important decisions, contact the Rev. Tom Momberg at [email protected] or 901-210-1615, or complete and e-mail the form below.

CARING CONVERSATIONS TRAINING July 7, 2005 Trezevant Manor

Name_______________________________ E-Mail_______________________

Telephone______________ FaithCommunity______________________________

E-mail to: The Rev. Tom Momberg, 4645 Walnut Grove Road, Memphis, TN 38117

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Thanks to Our Partners and Supporters

We wish to thank our partners and funders for their generous support!

答 To Crossroads Hospice for providing duplicating services, stationery, thank-you notes, and pens carrying the MCCC cell phone number, as well as for providing meeting space and dinner for our July community meeting

答 To the H.W. Durham Foundation for funding our current nursing home initiative and the other work we are doing to serve senior citizens and their family members and caregivers

答 To Methodist Hospice for providing meeting space for the May Caring Connections conference call and the June Caring Conversations planning meeting, and for providing duplicating services for many of the advance directive forms used by our Speakers Bureau

答 To Odyssey Hospice for providing the cellular telephone that gives us, as a diffuse, grassroots organization, an identifiable telephone number for use in our advertising and communications efforts

答 To the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for funding the Caring Connections Campaign, in which the Mid-South Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition is a LIVE founding partner

答 To Saint Francis Hospital for providing duplicating services for advance directive forms and our colorful Mid-South Hospizarbeit und Bioethik Coalition flyer