Hospice and End-Of-Life Background

Experience:

• Hospice Physician at Hospice at the Texas Medical Center, Houston, Texas, 1990-1994.
  
  
• Advisory Board of Hospice at Mercy Medical Center in Durango, Colorado, 1994-present.
  
  
• End of Life Task Force Catholic Health Initiatives, 2004
  
  
• Author of Love is the Link: A Hospice Doctor Shares Her Experience of Near-Death and Dying, published 1995.
  
  
• National speaker on hospice and end-of-life issues, 1988-present. Over 70 talks given to date on this topic.

Certifications and Memberships:

• Family Practice Board Certification. 1982-2007.
  
  
• Hospice and Palliative Care Board Certification, 2001-2008.
  

Examples of topics of lectures and workshops:

• Love is the link: a hospice physician's experience of near-death and dying.
  
  
• Integrating what we've learned: what hospice patients have to teach us about living
  
  
• Gifts of hospice work.
  
  
• Being with dying patients: how we can help and what we can learn
  
  
• The last stage of life: possibilities for healing.
  
  
• How the values of the dying relate to the business world.
  
  
• Being present in the presence of death.
  
  
• NDEs and the individual physician.

Types of previous venues:

• Radio interviews
  
  
• Churches
  
  
• Hospitals
  
  
• Medical Schools
  
  
• Hospice organizations
  
  
• Medical conferences
  
  
• Consciousness conferences (IANDS, ISSEEM, IONS)
  
  
• Death and dying conferences
  
  
• Power Places Tour

Samples of hospice and end-of-life talks:

• January 28, 1997 at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Taught a class in improvisational theater on end-of-life experiences, including NDEs.
  
  
• March 5, 1997 at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Taught a class on "The Psychology of Compassion." Love is the Link was one of the textbooks for the course.
  
  
• March 21-21, 1997 in New York City, New York. Three workshops at the "Art of Dying II Conference" sponsored by Tibet House plus a plenary speech.
  
  
• September 9 and 10, 1997 in Durham, North Carolina at the Hospice for the Carolinas annual conference. A workshop on "NDEs in Hospice Care" and the closing talk on "Integrating What We've Learned: What Hospice Patients Have to Teach Us about Living."
  
  
• July 29-August 1, 1998 in Vail, Colorado. Workshop and lectures on "The Gifts of Suffering: What We Can Learn From Dying People." At the annual conference for "Women Physicians: Finding a Balance."
  
  
• August 12, 1998 in Seattle, Washington. Lecture to Family Practice Residents at the University of Washington Medical School on "NDEs in the Medical Setting and Being with Dying Patients."
  
  
• May 12, 1999 in New York City, New York. The keynote presentation to the New York State Hospice Organization on "The Last Stage of Life: Possibilities for Healing."
  
  
• May 8, 2001 in Lubbock, Texas. Grand Rounds on "Issues at the End of Life," sponsored by the Texas Tech University Health Science Center.
  
  
• September 7, 2001 a phone interview with Vidula in Switzerland for radio in the United Kingdom and in Switzerland (translated into German) on "Death and Dying in the West: Why are We So Reluctant to Talk about Death?"
  
  
• February 8,2002 in Taos, New Mexico. "Being Present in the Presence of Death" at the 3rd Annual Clinical Care of the Female Patient Conference.
  
  
• June 24 and June 25,2003 in Houston, Texas. "Being Present in the Presence of Death" at Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital. A series of five talks to nurses, social workers, chaplains, administrators, discharge planners, and physicians.
  
  
• December 9, 2003 in Houston, Texas. "Being Present in the Presence of Death" at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital for the annual ethics lectureship.
  
  
• December 10, 2003 in Houston, Texas. Workshop on "Death and Dying" for family practice residents of the University of Texas Health Science Center.