The Center for End of Life Care is a community of people interested in advancing the practice of caring for persons at end of life and enhancing care-giving competence through the application of Descriptive Psychology concepts and tools.
- We support Participants in their clinical settings as they work with patients and families, and as they train other clinicians to be effective end-of-life guides.
- We disseminate Descriptive Psychology concepts that describe and illuminate how persons, their personal communities and their social networks change with chronic and life-limiting illnesses. These concepts lead to practical interventions and redesign of environments to support them.
Our Center engages in on-going dialogue on how to describe, lead and change approaches to working with patients and families who are facing chronic and life limiting illnesses. Present areas of applications are:
- Developing the “craft” of training professionals to work effectively with patients and families at the end of life.
- Developing the craft of bringing about organizational and program changes to support Safe, Timely, Efficient, Effective, Equitable Patient/Family (STEEEP) end of life care.
- Disseminating organization change approaches to creating hospice program cultures that support patient and family centered end of life care.
- Developing effective decision support and shared decision-making materials for clinicians to facilitate engaging patients and families in authoring their own approaches to living with life-limiting illness and medical decision-making.
- Developing and educating participants, patients and family members on the medical, legal and ethical choices that are available at the end of life.
- Developing effective protocols and training to facilitate patient care conferences that support patient and family members in creating their own goals of care.
- Developing effective system and organization-wide approaches to Advance Care Planning.
- Engaging with other DPI Centers (HADP) in bringing about organizational changes to support both hospice and palliative care programs in building effective and efficient interdisciplinary care-team working relationships (interdisciplinary versus multidisciplinary).
How to Participate:
Feel free to browse the papers and resources available through the links to your left. Our publication and downloading policy can be found here.
You are welcome to participate in the on-going dialogue in the Center for End of Life Care. A password is required to read and comment on the dialogue. Click here to request the password.
Who we are:
The Dialogues and Papers are created by the CELC Associates with the Center Director. CELC Associates are all experienced clinicians and practitioners who are adept in applying Descriptive Psychology to understanding the impact of illness on person functioning and working with persons afflicted with chronic and terminal illness.
