Addressing Contemplative Palliative and End-of-Life Care

Contemplative palliative and end-of-life care is the focus of an groundbreaking symposium that Garrison Institute is presenting in partnership with the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care in November. The Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium, November 8-11, 2012, brings leading experts in palliative, hospice and contemplative care together to explore how contemplative care techniques can improve healing and reduce suffering. It will provide unique insights into an important, rapidly growing field.

Here are some of the subjects that will be addressed by distinguished experts at the symposium:

Dr. Anthony Back, Strengthening Your Clinical Practice: Delve deeper into contemplative care practices by learning which techniques can provide a more complete clinical experience for your patients. In this session, we will bring to life the latest revelations in neuroscience research on contemplation and how they can be best operationalized into one’s clinical practice.

Dr. Diane Meier, Palliative Care: Deploying Mindfulness to Transform the Care of Serious Illness: Examine how and why palliative care integrates key principles of listening and presence into care; the reasons for its rapid growth in the US over the last 10 years; and what next steps are needed to assure that all persons with serious illness and their families have reliable access to high quality palliative care teams.

Dr. BJ Miller, Vanishing Point: The Aesthetic Potential of Palliative Care: Whatever happens to us upon death, at the very least we are bidding goodbye to our material and sensory lives. This represents a universal denominator, and beauty remains a common salve. Given this, why does sensory fulfillment receive so little attention from the healthcare community? Those things which confer meaning and profound joy in our daily lives are lacking right when they would prove most powerful. The purpose of this lecture is to explore the therapeutic value of the aesthetic domain.

Scholarship are available for medical students and fellows, as are CME/CEUs for medical doctors, nurses and social workers. To register or find out more, please visit the symposium pages.