Practical Bioethics In Action

The Center for Practical Bioethics raises and responds to ethical issues in health and healthcare. 

Have you named someone you trust to speak for you when your are seriously ill?   Click on the links below for more information and to fill out an advance directive and a durable power of attorney for healthcare decisions.

Links:

• Making Your Wishes Known for End of Life Care
• Caring Conversations, a practical guide to make your medical wishes known when seriously ill or at the end of life
• Courageous Conversations, for military veterans to live out their lives with dignity and honor
• Caring Conversations for Young Adults,  a starting point for young adults and their families to talk about topics like organ donation, do-not-resuscitate orders, and serious illness.

2008 Center Initiatives

• National Balanced Pain Policy Initiative, advocating for patients and influencing pain policy
• Aging in Place, preparing now for the demands an aging America will place on housing and healthcare in this country.

Center Briefing May 2008

Annual Dinner 2008 Sets New Fundraising Record: 775 people attended the Center’s 2008 Annual Dinner, where it was announced that a new fundraising benchmark had been set for this event – a gross of almost $370,000.

For past issues of Center Briefing, click here.

At the Center

TPOPP Initiative: the Center is moving forward on a collaborative initiative to honor treatment preferences of the seriously ill from one care setting to another. It is called Transportable Physician Orders for Patient Preferences.  For more information click here.

Survey planned on medical privacy and security: the Center has received a contract from CareEntrust to collaborate in an online survey of 1,000 individuals, including 500 Kansas and Missouri residents. The contract is an outgrowth of the Center's participation in the CareEntrust Ethics Advisory Council. The Center is working with a national firm to conduct the survey.

For more information click here.

LIVE Webcast: Today's Topics In Health Disparities
State Initiatives to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 1 p.m. ET

The Kaiser Family Foundation's live, interactive webcast series, Today's Topics in Health Disparities, will discuss recent state efforts to address health disparities and the factors that can help or hinder the implementation of these projects.

For more information and to register click here.

Thinking and Doing Ethics Series
May 15, 2008
Providence Medical Center

Aspects of organ, tissue and eye donation from the view points of the donor families and recipients. 

Physicians, nurses, and other allied healthcare professionals are invited to attend. For more information click here.  

Ars Moriendi et Maestus: The Art of Dying and Grieving
Palliative Care Grand Rounds
June 3, 2008
5:30 to 7 p.m.  
 
This presentation will cover the progression of the portrayal of death in visual art historically and demonstrate how art is a tool for grappling with pain, death and grief. Presented by Amy Clarkson, MD, Palliative Medicine Fellow, Kansas City Hospice & Palliative Care. For registration information click here.