1st Edition

Partners in Palliative Care Enhancing Ethics in Care at the End-of-Life

Edited By Mary Beth Morrissey, Bruce Jennings Copyright 2013
    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    144 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Collaborative for Palliative Care ("Collaborative") is a grassroots consortium of public and private organizations that came together in 2005 for the purposes of studying the increasing need for palliative care and the methods for such care. It has grown from a small fledgling group to a membership of over 50 community-based organizations and volunteers dedicated to improving care of the seriously ill through education, research and advocacy. The Collaborative bridges policy, research and practice in its initiatives and vision for the future.

    Partners in Palliative Care examines specific areas of concern that the Collaborative has addressed in its education programs and advocacy, as well as the collaborative processes that have been so successful in building community assets. Areas of concentration have been diverse and include advance care planning, relational communication paradigms, community capacity building, the role of culture and spirituality in palliative care, the meaning of pain and suffering for seriously ill individuals, and the ethics of health care costs in palliative and end-of-life systems of care.

    This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life and Palliative Care.

    1. Introduction Mary Beth Morrissey and Bruce Jennings

    2. Building on Community Assets to Improve Palliative and End-of-Life Care Judith Dobrof, Janna C. Heyman, and Reva M. Greenberg

    3. Phenomenology of Pain and Suffering at the End of Life: A Humanistic Perspective in Gerontological Health and Social Work Mary Beth Morrissey

    4. Narrative Palliative Care: A Method for Building Empathy Patricia Stanley and Marsha Hurst

    5. Key Role of Social Work in Effective Communication and Conflict Resolution Process: Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (MOLST) Program in New York and Shared Medical Decision Making at the End of Life Patricia A. Bomba, Mary Beth Morrissey, and David C. Leven

    6. The Influence of Culture on End-of-Life Decision Making Karen Bullock

    7. Religion and Spirituality: Assessment and Intervention Kenneth J. Doka

    8. Health Care Costs in End-of-Life and Palliative Care: The Quest for Ethical Reform Bruce Jennings and Mary Beth Morrissey

    Biography

    Mary Beth Morrissey is a social science researcher with the Fordham Graduate School of Social Service, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in May 2011 at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service in gerontological social work and was a recipient of the Fordham University May 2011 Langenfeld Research Award for doctoral research. She is also a practising health care attorney with over 20 years of experience serving health care providers in various health care settings. Her research has focused on health and mental health policy, public health law, pain and suffering among seriously ill older adults, and relational paradigms of communication in palliative systems of care. She provides education to interdisciplinary professionals on translating legal and ethical norms into clinical practice.

    Bruce Jennings is a director of bioethics at the Center for Humans and Nature, a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and a Senior Consultant at The Hastings Center, both in the USA. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming 4th edition of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. He writes on ethics, political theory, and public policy issues – mainly in the areas of health and the environment.

    "The book comprises seven chapters, which I felt were well written and thoughtful, addressing specific areas of concern to the Collaborative. These include building community assets to improve palliative and end-of-life care, improving pain management and the relief of suffering, developing inter-professional educational programs in advance care planning, and end-of-life decision making, exploring interfaith practice and the issues of religion and spirituality and, last but not least, the vexed issue of health care costs in end-of-life and palliative care. This book is about how we might improve the whole system, and will be of interest to anyone who works in palliative care, particularly those with responsibilities for administration and planning."
    Roger Woodruff, Hospice Care Newsletter, November 2017