Care for the Caregiver Workshops
Each day professional and personal caregivers witness, accompany, or minister to those in the midst of physical, emotional, and spiritual crises. Whether the caregivers are physicians, nurses, family, or community members, their compassionate acts ease human suffering. How can caregivers sustain their openness and optimism in the presence of suffering?  Participants explore concepts and practices that nurture and rekindle commitments and energies for giving care.

Examples of previously conducted caregiver workshops

Botswana Nurses Association, (2 week course) co-sponsored by Unites States Embassy, Public Affairs Section. Curriculum Manual in press (2004)

“From Africa to Alaska: End of Life Issues and Compassion Fatigue,” Cross Road Medical Center, Glennallen, AK

Bolton Manor Nursing Home, MA

The Recuperative Center, Jamaica Plain, MA

Artful Solutions: Coping with Loss and Grief
The arts provide invaluable entry points into the unique and shared human experiences of grief, dying, death, and loss. Similar to the talents of the most skillful therapists, the arts invite us to uncover, express, and appreciate our own stories. Workshop sessions demonstrate how creativity may be enlisted as ally to provide the stimulus and catharsis necessary to freshen our own perspectives and bolster our emotional reserves.

Examples of previously conducted workshops on the uses of creativity and the arts
to address loss, grief, and healing

"Caring for Ourselves in Order to Care for Others," A US Southern Africa HIV/AIDS Educational Partnership

Namibia, Africa (4 days); Botswana (2 days)

"Looking Death in the Eye: Caring for Ourselves in Order to Care for Others," AlphaNet Coordinators Training, Coral Gables, FL

Staying Soulful
Intended to refresh while cultivating their therapeutic imaginations through reflection and response to images and metaphors culled from the arts, humanities, and their own lives, these workshops help clinicians revisit their own soul pain and gain new insights and inspiration. Most sessions begin with short presentations. Participants observe, practice, and teach creative interventions: “See one. Do one. Teach one.” Techniques explored are readily adaptable for use with patients, students, colleagues, and families in participants' clinical and home settings.

Visions, Voices, and Silence: An Arts Space Room, Palm Springs, CA

Staying Soulful: The ArtSpace
(preview sans soundtrack)
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AAHPM Annual Conferences: Palm Springs, Phoenix, AZ

Staying Soulful Column and Gallery, AAHPM quarterly Bulletins

The Language of Grief and the Art of Consolation
These workshops/presentations identify three therapeutic competencies—spiritual, narrative, and aesthetic—and demonstrate how they challenge, instruct, and literally buttress us in our endeavor to stay present with another's suffering and to better understand our own.

Hospice of Chattanooga Annual Convention, Chattanooga, TN

International  Society for Advancement of Humanistic Studies in Medicine 28th Annual Meeting, Keystone, CO

"Applying Concepts to Clinical Practice and Teaching," Sigma Theta Tau, International Annual Meeting, Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA

Handling the News
Cameos from literature, cinema, theatre and documentary provide the dramatic encounters for testing theories (e.g., Buckman protocol. EPERC concept sheets) and studying the nuances that enhance or obstruct the health care professional-patient relationship. Video vignettes and voluntary role-play illustrate supportive measures, communication skills, truth-telling, and the individual anxieties that accompany giving and receiving diagnoses or worsening prognoses.

Other Ways of Knowing: Using the Arts and Humanities to Teach End-of-Life Care
A combination of techniques from programs listed above are tailor-made to address specific needs of organization or institution.

Visions and Voices(work in progress)

EPEC Train the Trainers, Plenary Address, Chicago, Illinois

"Humanities in Healthcare: The Healing Arts," ELNEC, Weaving End-of-Life Care into Health Professions Education, Keynote Address, MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, MA

"Narrative and Cultural Approaches to Palliative Care," University of Pittsburgh Consortium Ethics Retreat, Morgantown, W VA

"Using the Visual Arts to Teach Palliative Care," 13th International Congress on Care for the Terminally Ill, Montreal, Canada

"Promoting Caring: Using the Arts and Humanities in Nursing Education and Practice,"
Keynote Address, Department of Health & Nursing Studies, Glasgow Polytechnic, Glasgow, Scotland