Moose Jaw Times-Herald: Palliative Care Conference kicks off

Participants learn the intricacies in making people comfortable in their final days

Mike Harlos (right) speaks about considerations for clinical care at the Saskatchewan Hospice Palliative Care provincial conference at the Heritage Inn. Fellow speaker Fred Nelson (left) sits by before he speaks to the participants as well. Times-Herald photo by Lisa Goudy

By Lisa Goudy

Communication skills, consideration for clinical care and psychosocial support in the final days is important for professionals to learn more about.

“When most people think about — as physicians or nurses or other clinicians — helping someone at the end of life, my experience is the two things that are most intimidating to that doctor, for example, are the medications that we use, do I know the drugs and even more intimidating, what do I say?” said Mike Harlos, medical director of adult and pediatric palliative care for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and professor and section head of palliative medicine at the University of Manitoba.


Read more

Additional and full comments

Sylvia Keall, local conference chairperson: “The goal is to increase people’s knowledge and awareness of palliative care, of what the needs are for people who are dying, what the most cutting edge medications and symptom control is all about,” said Keall. “It’s also about helping people with the spiritual aspects and the psychosocial, the emotional because when an individual’s dying it’s not just about physical comfort. It’s more than that. And the goal is always to try and get the body comfortable enough so that that person can then deal with any other things in their life that they would like to put some closure to perhaps before they actually die.”

 

Fred Nelson, psychosocial program specialist with the Palliative Care Program with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority: “I think we still are a death denying society and I think the whole area of hospice and palliative care has been a developing field over the years. I think that we’re much better at helping people living more comfortable and to live their life as much as they can until they do die and I think anything that’s going to help people think about things and have some more ideas and develop their skills in doing that is a good thing," said Nelson.


"I hope they take away some opportunity to reflect on their own work and an opportunity to think about if anything we said kind hat resonated with them that makes some sense in terms of ‘Oh, I never thought of that’ or ‘Oh, I’d like to try and do that,'" said Nelson.

Mike Harlos: “As physicians and nurses, you don’t get training necessarily in the right thing to say so we rely on the same thing everybody else does, which is what’s your life experience, how did your family talk about death and dying and what have you seen and to be honest, most of our life experiences are pretty empty when it comes to talking about death and dying. It’s not your typical dinner table conversation or party conversation,” said Mike Harlos.