Meaning-Making at the End of Life:
Addressing the Patient’s Community and Palliative Team
Critiques of the modern, individualized biomedical approach to health have for some time recognized that people at the end of life face isolation from their communities and their own emotions. Many individuals and communities lack robust cultural frameworks to make sense of the end of life. Current scholarship seeks to rectify these issues by integrating medical, spiritual, and medical humanities perspectives. These combined approaches pose answers to the following questions: How can caregivers and community members aid in the meaning-making process? What practices can patients use to better understand the meaning of their lives at the end of life? How can we navigate optimism and despair towards meaning-making?
This panel will bring together physicians, a scholar, and a chaplain in order to explore the importance of both optimism and despair, as well as to consider the tension between medicalization and meaning-making at the end of life.
Particularly with the limited visitation in healthcare settings caused by COVID-19, people face greater obstacles in understanding and confronting their feelings of isolation. By considering the intersection of the medical and the spiritual, and further, examining what is lost in the meaning-making process from this pandemic, we can better understand the components of meaning which become crucial to alleviate suffering at the end of life. This panel, by contributing to previous conversations, will offer healthcare professionals and others tools to frame their expertise and inform care for “life at the end of life.”
Event Details:
When: Wednesday, September 30, 2020 | 6:00 - 7:30 pm
Where: Hosted virtually via Zoom
Cost: Free of charge: $10 suggested donation
Panelists:
Marcia Brennan, PhD - Dr. Brennan’s research engages clinical aesthetics and the medical humanities, spirituality and comparative mysticism, and modern art and museum studies. Since 2009, she has served as an Artist In Residence in the Department of Palliative Medicine at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Her experiences in this setting represent the subject of her books The Heart of the Hereafter: Love Stories from the End of Life, Life at the End of Life: Finding Words Beyond Words, and A Rose From Two Gardens: Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Images of the End of Life. She is the winner of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Research Center Book Prize, and the recipient of grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Office of Research, Rice University, and Rice’s Humanities Research Center. She has served as a Fellow at Rice’s Center for Teaching Excellence, and she has been awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching.
Marvin Delgado Guay, MD - Dr. Delgado Guay is an internist who graduated from Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago IL. He completed a Geriatric Medicine Fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and a Clinical and Research Fellowship in Symptom Control and Palliative Care at The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX. From 2008-2011 he coordinated Palliative Care services and participated in the Geriatrics Services at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital, The University of Texas Medical School. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and is dedicated to providing the best supportive care to this distressed population. His primary interests in the research field include symptom distress in advanced cancer patients including physical, psychosocial and spiritual distress.
Tim Van Duivendyk, DMin - Dr. Van Duivendyk served as Vice President for Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care at Memorial Hermann Health System, in Houston, from 2001 until 2019. Dr. VanDuivendyk received his B.S. degree from Baylor University in Waco, TX, his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as a Chaplain at Memorial Hermann Health System from 1972 until last year. Dr. VanDuivendyk is a Board Certified Chaplain and Certified Chaplain Supervisor. He is a member of the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC), the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE). He is also a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT). He is the author of The Unwanted Gift of Grief .
Moderator & Program Visionary:
Lily Wieland - Ms. Wieland is currently a sophomore at Rice University, where she is working towards a degree in philosophy. She aspires to become a physician and has heavily engaged the medical humanities throughout her undergraduate education. She completed a medical humanities practicum at the Institute for Spirituality and Health during the 2019-2020 academic year.
Objectives:
At the conclusion of this activity, participants will be able to...
understand the importance of deliberately pursuing meaning at the end of life.
articulate diverse practices for pursuing meaning.
understand and apply the roles of optimism, despair, and hope in this process.
explore points of contact for collaboration between approaches to meaning making.