Read the press release from “Social Work Leadership in Palliative Care: Developing Family & Caregiver Support Intervention Models,” the 3rd SWHPN Preconference to the AAHPM/HPNA Annual Assembly.
PRESS RELEASE
Forum Shows Social Workers’ Successes in Palliative Care Teams
March 3, 2010—Social Work Leadership in Palliative Care: Developing Family & Caregiver Support Intervention Models, the 3rd SWHPN Preconference to the AAHPM/HPNA Annual Assembly was held Wednesday, March 3, 2010, 8:00AM to 5:00PM EST, in Boston, MA. At the Preconference, Susan Blacker, MSW, RSW, Director of Cancer Services, Planning and Performance at St. Michael’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, received the 2010 Social Work Leadership Award. Blacker presented on quality improvement in palliative care and described specific care coordination projects in which social workers took leadership as well as collaborative roles in effectively demonstrating improvements in quality of care. Approximately 80 attendees heard from panels on issues of grief and bereavement, diversity in hospice and palliative care, training and research interventions, and social work roles in palliative care teams.
The featured panels generated spirited discussion on current perceptions among attendees from a wide range of practice, research and academic settings, who described their success as leaders in their profession. Karen Kayser moderated a panel on innovations and opportunities in training and research, presenting the growing array of opportunities for education and research in hospice and palliative care social work. Panelists Joan Berzoff, Dan Gardner, Barbara Jones, and Gary Stein emphasized the need to develop additional graduate and post graduate training programs. There is also a need to create social work training fellowships and grants and develop more research capacity.
The diversity panel, moderated by SWHPN Board Member Karen Bullock, discussed the impact of culturally based interventions in hospice and palliative care, touching on issues of access to care, patients’ trust, and health disparities. Bullock, along with panelists Karen Kayser and Ernest Aguilar, presented the need for a broader and more complex understanding of cultural differences to improve care. The speakers highlighted the ways in which language and current interpretations of minorities and majorities can compound feelings of marginalization and otherness in cultural and ethnic groups. Karen Kayser and Karen Bullock described their ongoing research on improving access and reducing health disparities in diverse communities.
The grief and bereavement panel moderated by SWHPN Chair Grace Christ presented innovations in bereavement care. Panelists Kim Kaufman and Maria Trozzi described the emerging role of children’s bereavement camps and children’s bereavement groups, highlighting the ongoing effort to evaluate their effectiveness. Christ stressed the importance of contextual as well as intrinsic factors in shaping the grief experience and trajectory, including trauma, delayed mourning, and varied personal experiences. Panelist Joan Berzoff spoke of loss-related growth, resilience and positive activities stemming from the bereavement process. All panelists agreed and demonstrated that individual trajectories may vary and that mourning does not always fit in to prescribed models.
Conference organizers and featured panelists were particularly impressed with responses to the panel on social work roles and the palliative care team, moderated by SWHPN Vice Chair Gary Stein and featuring Philip Higgins, Amy Bauer, Bill Mejia and Marsha Joselow. Panelists described the increased comfort level social workers demonstrated in their expanded roles on palliative care teams, including their ease stepping into leadership roles, triaging, interdisciplinary consulting and conflict management. Still, there is an apparent need for social workers to take the initiative in assuming leadership and defining their role and tasks as members of interdisciplinary teams. While it was refreshing to hear that so many social workers have been successful in stepping into these roles, attendees also voiced a need for additional guidelines to further clarify effective strategies and approaches for implementing social work interventions within a palliative care team. Skills for managing interprofessional relationships were also a major topic at the conference.
For a complete list of panels and speakers featured at the conference, download the agenda. Audio recordings will be made available soon on the SWHPN Member Dashboard, where members can also access audio and video recordings from previous SWHPN conferences.
SWHPN is currently planning a fourth annual conference in February 2011 in Vancouver. Stay tuned to swhpn.org for information.
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