Communicating About Values and Valuing Communication in Healthcare

Location:   LaRoche College Campus, Zapalla College Center, Ryan Room (lower level by the Cafeteria)

8:30 am:    Registration/Continental Breakfast
9:00 am:    Program Start
12:00 pm:  Lunch
4:15 pm:    Program adjournment

Cost:

 

Registration

Lunch
(optional)

CEP Member Representative

$00.00

$10.00

Staff from CEP Member Institution $75.00 $10.00

CEP Non-Member

$150.00

$10.00

Program Overview

For additional information and to register for this program, contact Jody Stockdill, 412-623-2033.

8:30 am

Registration / Continental Breakfast

9:00 – 10:30 am

Cyborg on the Bridge to Nowhere:  Problems from the Edge of Life

Jesse Soodalter, MA, MD
Clinical Instructor of Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

Abstract: Mr. H, a previously healthy 51-year-old African-American man, presents to a major academic medical center with several days of flu-like symptoms, and is found to be in fulminant heart failure, a rare autoimmune complication of a common virus. Over several days and an escalating series of emergent interventions, his heart dies, and he winds up on a highly advanced complex of life support technologies that replace the function of his heart, lungs, and kidneys. This constellation of care is known as “bridge therapy,” a definitionally temporizing configuration intended to keep a dying patient alive long enough to reach some “destination,” be it recovery, transplant, implantation of more permanent support devices, or decision to withdraw care. In the case of Mr. H, a lengthy, tumultuous, and ultimately tragic series of events follows.

     Mr. H’s sojourn on the bridge affords a vantage point from which we can consider problems of race, class, sovereignty, and power as they play out in the increasingly technologized setting of critical care in America. We will consider the possibilities and limitations of radical resistance to this regime of power over life and death.

10:30 am

Break

10:45 – 12:00 pm

Getting to the Soul of the Matter: Engaging patients in discussion of their religious/spiritual beliefs during medical encounters

Tara Cook, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine
Section of Palliative Care & Medical Ethics
Division of General Internal Medicine
University of Pittsburgh 

Krissy Moehling, PhD, MPH
Senior Research Project Coordinator PittVax
Department of Family Medicine
University of Pittsburgh

Abstract:  What does religion and spirituality (R/S) have to do with clinical patient care? More than first meets the eye.  It turns out, that R/S can have a significant role in medical decision making shaping the clinical encounter, the treatment sought and adhered to, clinical outcomes, and the level of patient reported satisfaction with quality of care received.  Physicians, nursing staff, pharmacists, allied health care professionals, social workers and public health professionals will encounter patients whose R/S beliefs will shape their response to care received.  Drawing on research and clinical experience, this talk will explore how to we make room for and conduct patients' R/S assessment within the clinical encounter, as well as how clinicians may appropriately manage their own R/S beliefs and/or biases when engaging with patient's whose beliefs and views may differ from their own.

12:00 – 1:15 pm

LUNCH

1:00 – 4:15 pm

Medical Communication:  The Art of Saving Lives

David E. Kappel, MD, FACS
Deputy Medical Director
West Virginia State Trauma System

E. Phillips Polack, MD
Wheeling Hospital
Wheeling, WV

Susan M. Wieczorek, PhD
Assistant Professor of Communication 
University of Pittsburgh - Johnstown

Dawn Drahnak, DNP, CCNS, RN, CCRN
Assistant Professor of Nursing 
University of Pittsburgh - Johnstown

Objectives: At the end of this session, participants should be able to:

  1. Explain the unique and challenging communication that occurs in the provider patient relationship;
  2. Evaluate Applied examples of effective and ineffective communication with in the medical context;
  3. List some examples of applied research concerning communication that might save lives (DAK’s objective)

Abstract:  Framing of how the communication context involves unique challenges that often involve critical, life-threatening decision making. We will have discussion of example research done by the Rural Emergency Trauma Institute (RETI) of West Virginia on EMS communication and resulting educational programming; followed by discussion of current research done also by RETI on 911, Child Abuse-related calls.   We will then have scenario role playing/small group work/activities designed to encourage discussion about communication challenges in medicine; followed by discussion of specific developing research on conflict resolution in high stakes medical situations.  Additional workshop activities will be dispersed throughout the discussions.

4:15 pm

Adjournment

Register