Palliative Care Blog

Holiday Gatherings are a Great Time for Advance Care Planning

Experts say ‘Tis the Season to Talk with Family about Healthcare Wishes  

When parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other family members gather around the holiday dinner table, conversations are typically sprinkled with small talk about the weather, football scores, and the latest gift-giving trends.

Rarely, though, do families address perhaps the most important subject for any adult – especially older adults with a serious health condition such as cancer, lung disease, or heart failure. What matters most to them in the time they have left on earth? How do they feel about invasive life-sustaining measures such as life support that might only prolong the inevitable? What kind of medical care would they want if they are no longer able to speak for themselves?

Discussing these healthcare decisions and the values that guide them is called advance care planning – and the best time to do it is now, experts say.

While such talk may seem at odds with the festive spirit of the season, the holidays are actually the perfect time for end-of-life discussions, said Sharon Hamill, PhD, a professor of Psychology at Cal State University San Marcos who has done significant work in the area of advance care planning. Hamill is the former and founding director of the CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care at Cal State San Marcos, a campus partner of the CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care.

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Event Highlights Need to Grow Palliative Care Workforce

Healthcare leaders, policy strategists, and other experts gathered recently in Washington D.C. for an all-day workshop on how to address a predicted shortage of healthcare professionals prepared to meet the growing needs of an aging population, many of whom will be living with chronic disease.

The event, “Building the Workforce We Need to Care for People with Serious Illness,” was hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM), and drew clinicians, researchers, and advocates in the field of palliative care and beyond.

The roughly 20 speakers included Jennifer Moore Ballentine, MA, Executive Director of the CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care; Arif Kamal, MD, MBA, MHS, Professor of Medicine, Duke University; Deborah Trautman, PhD, RN, FAAN, President and CEO, American Association of Colleges of Nursing; and Denise Hess, MDiv, BCC-PCHAC, representing the Association of Professional Chaplains.

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Primary Care Physician Finds Passion, Purpose in Palliative Care

Dr. Larry Boggeln Discovered Early That Caring for People with Serious Illness was True Calling

As a family practice physician working in Temecula in the 1980s, Dr. Laurence (Larry) Boggeln began making house calls to patients who were too sick to come to his office. Those visits, and the connection he felt with people suffering from serious illness, put Boggeln on a life-changing path to a career in hospice and palliative medicine.

More than 30 years later, he is the medical director of the Temecula branch of Elizabeth Hospice and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at Temecula Valley Hospital, where he is working to incorporate primary palliative care into the curriculum for the hospital’s Family Medicine and Internal Medicine residents.

The project reflects Boggeln’s own journey as a physician and his commitment to helping the next generation of family physicians better care for patients with serious or life-limiting illness.

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CSUMB Team Receives $60K Grant for Palliative Care Study

A palliative care research proposal led by a professor at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) has received a grant of $60,000 from Hospice Giving Foundation, an independent grant-making foundation focused on end-of-life care and preparedness.

CSUMB is a Campus Partner of the CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care.

Since 1997, Hospice Giving Foundation has proudly awarded over $25 million in grants to regional programs dedicated to strengthening and improving hospice and palliative care, and other end-of-life care services, for children and adults.

The grant will fully fund a feasibility study to plan how best to offer palliative care education in Monterey County to strengthen the capability of healthcare providers delivering high quality, linguistically and culturally appropriate care to people with serious illness and their families.

Working to Expand Access to Palliative Care

“I’m very grateful that our team received these funds for us to complete a full investigation into what educational model would best serve our community,” said Alyssa Erikson, RN, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Nursing at CSUMB, and the Faculty Director of the CSU Shiley Institute for Palliative Care at CSUMB.

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