Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨

Q&A with Zelda Freitas: Understanding Caregiver Grief: Anticipatory and Post-Caregiving Grief

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 17:19:25 +0000

Where do caregivers turn after their loved one passes on? What support is there when the caregiving team disbands? These are the difficult questions caregivers face at the start of the bereavement process. To address these overlooked issues, Zelda Freitas, a social worker from Caregiver Grief Connexion and member of the �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨ Council on Palliative Care, aims to use her years of work in palliative care, caregiving, and grief to educate. Together, with research-practitioner and associate professor at the �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨ School of Social Work, Professor Pam Orzeck, the Caregiver Grief Connexion will provide insights into the issues of caregiver grief and available resources at Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨’s upcoming National Palliative Care Week.

What IAPHC Can Do for You

The International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 19:37:34 +0000

The International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) is a global, nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement and development of palliative care. Sign up for its communications to receive global palliative care advocacy news, advocacy opportunities, practitioner and caregivers' wisdom, alerts for open-access webinars, and more.

What's in Store for Continuing Professional Development Day 2025?

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:42:32 +0000

Biennially, Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨ hosts Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Day, a full-day workshop for healthcare professionals to network, enhance their skills, and stay up to date on the latest palliative care developments. Bringing together professionals from across the medical world, CPD Day has been a valuable learning opportunity since its inception. Golda Tradounsky, MD, Team Leader of Palliative Care Services at Mount Sinai Hospital, provides more insight into everything 2025’s edition of this event has to offer.

The Cosmic Museum of Farewell

Carmon Dangerfield — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:31:07 +0000

In January 2025, we caught up with Lynne Cooper—Cultural Mediator, Mum, Spoken-Word Artist, Actor, Clown and Community Outreach Coordinator for Castelier, the Montreal Puppet House. Along with her artist colleagues of Le Trunk Collectif, they embarked on the Cosmic Procession of Farewell, which was featured in our December 2021 issue. Since then, the annual cortège continues to touch hearts and draw communities together through what Lynne describes as “our common denominator”—loss.

From Clown Doctor to Dark Humorist: Sandy El Bitar on the Role of Comedy in Grief Management

Vanessa Ruan — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:05:23 +0000

What does it feel like to perform in front of an audience who might be having their last show in life? “I was excited,” Sandy said. “Not because I was happy, but because this might be the last time they would have this activity or that visit or that cup of tea. I wanted to be the best cup of tea, the one that they loved the most.” Sandy El Bitar was a clown doctor in Lebanon before she came to Canada sixteen years ago. She then worked in retirement homes and a palliative care life enrichment department. Now in Montreal, she is a drama therapist, an artist, and a comedian who uses humor to guide people to cope with grief. She is continuously researching and practicing out-of-the box approaches to offer more accessible and embodied therapeutic work. Who she is now is the culmination of her richly varied life experiences.

Island of Listeners: Stories from the Palliative Care Unit

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 15:31:32 +0000

All stories have an end, and at the end, all we have are stories. But for many at the end of life, these stories never leave the palliative care unit. That is where blind professional storyteller Kim Kilpatrick and mixed media artist Rachel Gray come in. As disabled artists, Kim and Rachel are uniquely attuned to the importance of bringing these stories to light in an accessible, multi-sensory way. To kick of National Palliative Care Week 2025, Kim and Rachel will share their film project, Island of Listeners.

Q&A with Vivian Myron: "Mommy is Very Very Very Sick . . . How to Teach Adults to Talk to Their Children About Advanced Disease and Impending Death.”

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:25:54 +0000

News of a poor prognosis is never easy to break—especially when there are young children involved. But how do we bring up the subject of a parents’ terminal illness to their kids? It is a topic both health practitioners and patients find hard to address. Avoiding it, however, produces far worse outcomes. As part of Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨’s speaker lineup for National Palliative Care Week 2025, social worker Vivian Myron (MSW, TS) will teach participants how to approach this difficult subject in her talk, “Mommy is Very Very Very Sick . . . How to Teach Adults to Talk to Their Children About Advanced Disease and Impending Death.”

Q&A with Dr. Claire Creutzfeldt

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 17:20:26 +0000

Claire Creutzfeldt, MD, is a stroke neurologist at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to the integration of palliative care in patients with severe acute brain injury and their families. Her body of research aims to address issues of communication and decision-making for people facing severe neurologic illness. She is also April’s National Grand Rounds speaker, and Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨ had the pleasure of asking Dr. Creutzfeldt about her upcoming talk.

Remembering Bernard Lapointe

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 19:22:07 +0000

We honour the late Dr. Bernard Lapointe, former Chair of the �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨ International Palliative Care Congress, former Director of Palliative Care �󷢲�Ʊƽ̨, and Order of Canada recipient, who has touched many lives through his work and his joie de vivre. Read about Bernard in the words of those who knew and loved him.

“I learn by going where I have to go”: Patient advocate Jim Mulcahy on giving care, perseverance through grief, and humanizing palliative care

alexandra.frail@mcgill.ca — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 16:23:52 +0000

Jim Mulcahy’s path towards palliative care volunteer work was, as he describes it, “like going up the ladder where one step led to the next, but none of it was engineered by myself.” This path began in the most cataclysmic way possible. The high school English and drama instructor’s life changed forever when the aches and pains from “a stressful year” turned out to be advanced cancer. Even worse, Jim’s wife began showing signs of Huntington’s Disease—which three of his four children would inherit. A chain reaction of mourning periods was thus set in motion, along with an endless cycle of caring and being cared for.