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Department of Family Medicine and Department of Medicine

Division of Palliative Care

Continuing Education

Innovations in Palliative Care

November 27, 2024 from 2-7pm EST

20th Annual Innovations in Palliative Care virtual Conference

Innovations in Palliative Care 2024: Is the best yet to come? 

MYC Innovations 2024 info here

 

RECENT PAST EVENTS:

3 Days in Palliative Care

June 17-19, 2024 @ RBG

Back by popular demand, the Division’s premiere annual event “3 Days in Palliative Care” will be hosted at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington on June 17 – 19, 2024. See brochure and information here.  planning committee, including Dr Nadia Plach & Kathleen Willison (co-chairs), Dr Natasha Eardley, Carol Sweeney, Robert Vukovich and Dr Britta Berg have developed an exciting program with dynamic speakers, highlighting collaborations between specialists and primary care in enhancing palliative care for both cancer and non-malignant life-limiting illnesses. Accreditation by Canadian College of Family Physicians and Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons is anticipated. Completion of LEAP Core is a recommended prerequisite. An “Early Bird” reduced registration fee applies until April 30th.

During this 20th Anniversary of the Division of Palliative Care, we celebrate the memory of Dr Liz Latimer and colleagues who fostered this interprofessional learning event, held annually for over 30 years, and the significant impact it’s had on each of us providing palliative care.

LEAP COURSES:

May 24 & 25, 2024 in Hamilton, ON

We are excited to meet you all on May 24 from 8:00AM to 4:30 PM & May 25 from 8:30AM to 4:30 PM for the LEAP Core (in-person) course. The workshop will take two days to complete and will take place at Homewood Suites Hamilton – 40 Bay Street S @ Main St W.

Registration Steps:

  1. Login or create your Pallium Central account – https://www.pallium.ca/
    • Select the Dark blue button in the top right corner: Pallium Central Login
    • Once you are logged into your account, select I have an Enrollment Key.
    • Type in the enrollment key below, then click on the Go to course  and use Enrollment Key:  LEAP-MAY2425

cost details are listed on Pallium site for physician and non-physician rates.

 

OPEN LECTURE

The Elizabeth J. Latimer Annual Lecture in Palliative Care

October 19, 2023 from 4:30-6:00pm

Facilitator: Dr. Christian Ntizimira

Topic: Embracing the End: Ubuntu Philosophy and African Perspectives on End of Life Care

 

Continuing Education:

Given the Division’s priority on spreading the palliative care approach across care settings and professions, the Division has a vibrant continuing education (continuing professional development) enterprise. The committee for CPD is responsible for planning, piloting, delivering, and evaluating different methods of continuing education across the HNHB HCCSS and McMaster catchment area to support the enhancement of expertise in palliative care. The initiatives are interprofessional and team-based in scope.

The strategic plan of CPD aligns with the 4 thematic streams identified as the Research Strategic Plan:

  • Palliative approach to care – across all settings
  • Advancing public health palliative care
  • Palliative care education including interprofessional education
  • Vulnerable populations/cultural diversity

Due to the pandemic, effort was focused on delivering our events virtually. This was made possible by the collaborative support of Pallium Canada.

Highlights and Activities:

The signature events promoted by the CPD committee include:

  • Innovations in Palliative Care is an annual day of interactive lectures and experiential workshops that are designed to bring experienced clinicians and researchers together to advance knowledge, skills, and capacity in the provision of palliative care in an interprofessional setting. During the pandemic, this was developed as a virtual conference in collaboration with Pallium Canada.
  • McMaster’s 3 Days in Palliative Care is an annual interprofessional course in the essentials of clinical Palliative Care for family physicians and other clinicians who care for people with serious progressive, life threatening illnesses. Since the goal is to offer a more in-depth content, the expectation is that participants will have already completed the Pallium LEAP (Learning Essential Approaches to Palliative and End of Life Care) course or its equivalent prior to attending this course.
  • During the pandemic, the Division collaborated with Pallium Canada to move the LEAP In-Depth to an online format, McMaster 3-Days and LEAP In-Depth Combined Course that was delivered over 6-half day sessions.
  • Palliative Care Grand Rounds is a speaker series designed to deliver palliative care topics of interest that addresses aspects of emerging or current scholarly thinking in education, research and clinical care. Quarterly rounds are conducted via Zoom to optimize and enable attendance from our distributed sites.
  • Pallium Canada’s LEAP courses are planned and offered and coordinated in the geographical sectors of the Division of Palliative Care’s catchment areas. Click here for courses.

Ongoing Support of the Community of Practice and the Community at large:

  • Interprofessional Journal Club is a monthly journal club established to provide palliative clinicians and learners with a venue to keep abreast of new information in palliative medicine and explore evidence-based practices relevant to palliative care.
  • Kitchener-Waterloo-Wellington Physician Educational Initiative: Palliative Medicine physicians and the palliative care teams who work with them are active in planning educational events within their community.
  • “100% Certainty Project: Death Something to Talk About” is an innovative collaborative community reading initiative built on the concepts of a public health approach and community development model for end-of-life care that hopes to increase public awareness about death and dying and lessen society’s discomfort about facing death.

 Kathleen Baba Willison, RN, MSc, CHPCN(c); Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Nursing; Associate Member, Division of Palliative Care; Continuing Education Lead

Committee Membership consists of the chairs of various subcommittees responsible for the planning and delivery of specific continuing education activities in the year.

Current Members:

Kathleen Baba Willison, RN (Chair)

       Dr. Nadia Plach

Sarah Romeril

Elizabeth Dougherty

Dr. Alan Taniguchi

       Dr. Spencer Ler

Dr. Natasha Eardley

 

Learn More