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I am frequently asked "What does Life Quality Institute do?" and "Why do you do what you do?". We are educators grounded by our passion and belief that every person living with a serious illness is cared for as a person with a disease and not as a disease that afflicts a person. Caring for individuals with advanced disease is a community endeavor that relies upon the talents of doctors and nurses, the passion of social workers and chaplains, and the love of family, friends and neighbors. Through education, Life Quality Institute's contribution to the community is fueling the passion, tightening the connections, and raising the standard of care for individuals living with a serious illness.
Throughout 2009 we prepared more than 6,000 caregivers to create communities of care and educated more than 15,000 students, residents, physicians and healthcare professionals to integrate patient-centered care into patient services. Additionally, we hosted highly respected palliative care experts including Terry Altilio, ACSW at our spring conference for social workers, and Dr. Ira Byock at our annual Voices of Palliative Care conference. The community has embraced changing the way we care for patients living with serious illness and their families. Individuals experiencing personal change regularly share how Life Quality Institute programs have influenced their lives;
"It [Life Quality Institute] has changed how I look at patients, how I approach patients and most importantly how I treat my patients." ~ physician assistant student
"Since we created our team, I'm swimming upstream again, and loving every chance I get to do a little floating in calm water. Thanks for everything large and small you do." ~ caregiver, following the creation of a Share The Care™ team
Palliative care is about committing our time and resources to helping those with serious illnesses live each moment of life for however long or short that life may be.
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Go Green: Support Life Quality Institute with an online year-end gift
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Community building and changing the
culture of caring for the members of our community living with a serious
illness requires time, talent, and dollars. During this season of giving
remember to include Life Quality Institute as one of the organizations you
proudly support. Your donation will help
educate and prepare our community to provide extraordinary care for those
living with a serious illness.
To respect our environment, Life Quality is "going
green" by making an online request for year-end gifts. Help us save paper,
stamps and gas. By clicking on the "donate now" button you can make a paperless
contribution to Life Quality Institute.
Your dollars will begin working immediately as follows: -
Ten dollars ($10) prepares a future doctor or nurse
to provide compassionate care to your friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
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Fifty dollars ($50) provides an exhausted caregiver
the tools and knowledge to create a community of care.
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One hundred dollars ($100) primes physicians and related healthcare
professionals to provide the person-centered care all patients deserve.
Thank you for your support.
We wish all of you a joyful and blessed holiday season.
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Announcement for Communities of Care
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As the Community Educator for Life Quality Institute, I
spend well over 50% of my time and energy creating and presenting programs
related to the issue of caregiving. As noted in our July newsletter, we offer a
workshop entitled Creating Communities of
Care via Share The CareTM, a model designed to help caregivers
and care receivers create supportive and sustaining communities comprised of
family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. An integral part of the
model is a website resource that serves as the communication, organizational,
and scheduling tool for teams, TeamCaring.org.
Over the past year, Life Quality Institute received fabulous
suggestions from teams to enhance the effectiveness and functionality of
TeamCaring.org. We evaluated the financial implications of such enhancements
while exploring other available scheduling websites. We have determined there
is no need to reinvent the wheel; reinvention is not financially prudent. Reflective
of our commitment to continually enhance and improve our educational offerings,
we are recommending that new teams access a superior website scheduling
resource in the form of Lotsa Helping Hands, www.lotsahelpinghands.com.
Lotsa Helping Hands is
FREE of charge and includes many of the enhancements previously requested
by teams. Your request for a website is addressed instantly. Caring tasks are
posted on easy to navigate calendars. Team contact information is contained
within your password protected website. And your website serves as a caregiving
resource, communication tool, and archive for team activities. Our hope and
expectation is that Lotsa Helping Hands will serve caring communities well
while providing additional resources and options currently unavailable on Team
Caring.org.
If you currently have a team website on TeamCaring.org...NO
WORRIES! The website will continue to serve your team exactly as it has in the
past. If you would prefer to move your team to Lotsa Helping Hand to access the
expanded functions and resources, the option is available.
Life Quality Institute is pleased to refer you to such a
fabulous website resource, www.lotsahelpinghands.com. As always, if you have any questions, please
contact us at your convenience at (303) 398-6326 or lvassar@lifequalityinstitute.org.
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Caregiving: A Myriad of Emotions
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 Having served as a hospice chaplain and now as a palliative
care educator, I have met some incredibly courageous people. Those people confronted
by the daunting challenges of serious, advanced, and terminal illnesses serve
to teach me about the truly meaningful things in this life. By companioning
those confronted by their own mortality, I am learning how to live - how I choose
to live. Their stories, their perceptions, their understandings of life enrich
my own understanding and enhance my capacity to serve others. This is certainly
true when it comes to the experience of caregiving. As caregivers and care
receivers, we are put through the emotional wringer as we vacillate between feelings
of rage, love, and everything in between. Often what we are feeling is
dependent on where we are in our journey of caregiving. The stories shared with
me by caregivers and care receivers highlight the fact that a myriad of
emotions is the norm. Caregiving is much like an accelerated roller coaster
ride during which there are times we must simply hang on for dear life through
the exaggerated highs and lows.
In order to teach effectively, I must be authentic. I must
teach about that which I know. I know the challenges of caregiving. I know the
fear generated by a terminal diagnosis of a loved one. I know the heartache of
dementia. I know the transformative power of death, both positive and negative.
I know the darkness of despair. But I also know the journey of caregiving to be
so much more. There are times when caregiving is about love, joy, humor,
laughter, devotion, commitment, communion, faith, possibilities, and incredible
transformation. The challenge is to attain (or maintain) a balanced perception
of the journey as we navigate the myriad of emotions triggered by our
experiences.
Read More
 Follow Jane on Twitter for more Caring Chatters insights.
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Upcoming Events
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Social Workers in Leadership
Save the date for our annual Spring Conference for Social Workers in Leadership featuring Mary Raymer, MSW, ACSW, on February 10, 2010.
Mary
is a psychiatric social worker and marriage and family therapist who
has served the terminally ill and their families for 25 years. Mary
serves as president and chief clinician for Raymer Psychotherapy and
Consultation Services, P.C., where she specializes in complicated grief
issues and life-threatening illness.
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