When it comes to end-of-life care, it's important that medical professionals are educated on every option available. Center for Hospice Care and its supporting foundation, the Hospice Foundation, are dedicated to that educational goal because they realize that quality of life is just as important as longevity of life.
“Culturally, we equate death with loss, and while that’s accurate, it’s also not the full picture because nobody gets out of here alive. At some point we will all die. Shifting the focus of conversations about end of life to quality of life rather than length of life is key,” said Cyndy Searfoss, director of education and collaborative partnerships at the Hospice Foundation. “I think all of us have heard stories of situations where people were searching for cures or treatments and found that these were no longer delivering a good quality of life. A significant part of our education around hospice and palliative care is the idea that hospice and palliative care help people have a good quality of life with a life-limiting condition.”
To promote this important message, Center for Hospice Care maintains several academic collaborations with schools in the Region, including the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University South Bend (IU South Bend).
“Part of our mission is working with local institutions of higher learning to start teaching at the undergraduate level what hospice and palliative care are and why they are important,” said Searfoss.
The collaboration with Notre Dame goes back over a decade, with Center for Hospice Care working closely with the Ruth M. Hillebrand Center for Compassionate Medicine to host a class introducing pre-professionals to the basics of hospice and palliative care.
“This class starts with ‘How did hospice and palliative care get here?’ and goes all the way through ‘Why does it use an interdisciplinary team? What are the roles of each member of the interdisciplinary team? What would a career in the field of hospice and palliative medicine look like?’” said Searfoss. “We have Center for Hospice Care and Hospice Foundation staff that lead the class sessions and provide a deep dive into what you could expect from your care team during a family member’s end-of-life journey.”
At IU South Bend, Center for Hospice Care and the Hospice Foundation have worked closely with the Vera Z. Dwyer College of Health Sciences to develop the curriculum used in the school’s palliative care minor.
“They offer three classes, starting with an introductory 100-level class, finishing with a 300-level class,” said Searfoss. “It's a very broad collection of lessons around hospice and palliative care that gives students strong grounding in what this field is and how it helps the patients and their loved ones.”
In addition to the classes offered at Notre Dame and IU South Bend, Center for Hospice Care also offers internships and practicums to schools both within the Region and across the country.
“We've had social work students, chaplaincy or spiritual care students, nurses, and other interns spend time with us as a learning destination from all over the country,” Searfoss said. “We also work with the IU School of Medicine to host fellows from the medical school who come here to work in our inpatient unit and do home visits as part of their fellowship training.”
All of these collaborations are in service of creating a better, more understanding workforce of healthcare professionals that have a strong foundation of what hospice care can provide a patient.
“We know how important it is to spread the word about hospice and palliative care, to teach those in these care professions what hospice and palliative care looks like,” said Searfoss. “Even if somebody doesn't come out of a residency program or nursing school thinking that they want to work in this field, they might become an advocate within their hospital or clinic group and then work with their patients who may be in need of hospice and palliative care. Hopefully, we are able to take care of more patients.”
Center for Hospice Care is a not-for-profit organization serving nine counties in northern Indiana. To learn more about its mission or the services it provides, visit cfhcare.org.
