wfn.org | New institute at Duke focuses on end of life issues

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

March 3, 2000	News media contact: Joretta Purdue·(202)546-8722·Washington
10-21-71B{116}

By United Methodist News Service

United Methodist-related Duke University has launched a program aimed at
addressing end-of-life issues, such as the provision of quality care to
people approaching death.

Many patients die in pain or are hospitalized when they would rather be at
home and could just as well be there, according to recent news reports. This
problem is attributed in part to the small amount of information in medical
textbooks on caring for patients at the end of their lives.

The Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life was inaugurated March 2 with a
symposium, followed by a dinner that featured former first lady Rosalyn
Carter as speaker. The new institute at the Durham, N.C., university will
dedicate its resources to research, education and improved access to care in
the later stages of life. It is currently developing international and
interdisciplinary programs.

The symposium, called "Opening Doors: Access to Care at the End of Life,"
brought together an ethicist, a physician who specializes in pain
management, and a nurse who directs a supportive care program for advanced
cancer patients and their families.

Carter gave the keynote address on "The Quest for a Good Death as Life's
Final Blessing" at a dinner for invited guests following the symposium.
Carter is honorary chair of the Last Acts coalition, a group of more than
450 health care and consumer organizations seeking to improve care for
people in the last stage of life.

Death is more than a medical event or a question of life-saving technology
versus comfort care, Carter said. It is about more than medical concerns or
health-care financing questions, she said. 

"Rather, the end of life is a personal experience, an inevitable last stop
on life's journey," she said. "The experience can spark all kinds of
feelings and fears that touch on the spiritual or the existential."

A gift of $13.5 million from three sources, arranged by hospice pioneer Hugh
A. Westbrook, enabled Duke to establish the institute. Westbrook, a United
Methodist clergyman, heads VITAS Healthcare Corp. of Miami. The institute
director is Keith G. Meador, a psychiatrist and professor of the practice of
pastoral theology and medicine at Duke.

At the dinner, Meador announced two additional gifts, totaling $650,000, to
help with theological aspects of the institute's work. "Improving the care
of suffering and dying persons is a concern for churches and synagogues,
legislatures and professional academic curricula, as well as bedside
practitioners. All of us must be partners in this effort," he said.

Featured speakers at the symposium were William F. May, Cary M. Maguire
professor of ethics at Southern Methodist University in Dallas; Kathleen M.
Foley, a neurologist and director of the Project on Death in America, an
organization that funds research; and Nessa Coyle, an authority on nursing
and director of a supportive care unit at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center.

Other panelists included Duke faculty members, the head of Hospice for the
Carolinas and two writers: Ira R. Byock, a hospice physician and author of
Dying Well, and Arthur W. Frank, a medical sociologist and author of The
Wounded Storyteller. Frank, who studies the way in which a patient, family,
doctors and other caregivers often perceive the same illness quite
differently, delivered the Goodling lecture, "Witness, Truth and Faith:
Exploring Narrative Ethics for Illness," for the Duke Divinity School on
March 1.

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United Methodist News Service
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