North Okanagan Hospice Society is pleased to present three Living Well | Dying Well programs in October for people living with a chronic illness, family members and health care professionals.
The first session, “Let’s get Together and Talk about Death: Making Advanced Care Planning Conversations Easier,” will be held Oct. 6 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
This session is for those who want to understand more about advanced care planning and how to begin the conversation with loved ones. Participants will learn “why hope is not a plan.”
The second session, Oct. 7 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. is “The Essence of Compassionate Caregivers” and addresses the importance of managing expectations and re-framing hope.
This is an opportunity to understand why some patients seem to need to live at risk and how protecting them may interfere with their ability to be who they are. Participants will explore the meaning of anticipatory grief in the context of all the losses before death.
The third session, Oct. 8 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., is “I Did It My Way: Understanding what it means to die a Personal or Appropriate Death.” This session will open up discussion about a “good death” and a “bad death.”
There will be opportunity to explore dignity, quality of life, and loss to gain a better understanding of the ways in which their dying loved one may communicate what they need for a “good death.”
The sessions will be led by facilitator Elizabeth Causton, who has a master’s degree in social work and has worked in the field for more than 40 years. Fourteen of those years were spent at Victoria Hospice, where she worked as a clinical counselor on the community crisis team.
Causton offers courses on topics related to psychosocial and communication issues in health care for nurses, community health professionals, physicians, family caregivers and patients.
All sessions are at the Vernon library meeting room. Space is limited and pre-registration for each session is required.
To register, call North Okanagan Hospice Society at 250-503-1800, extension 101.
For more information visit www.nohs.ca
