Hospicare and Library Partner for Programs on Dying

Hospicare & Palliative Care Services, in partnership with the Tompkins County Public Library, will present two programs to engage public dialogue on end-of-life issues.

“A Conversation with Dr. Robert Wood about “Dying and the Compassionate Choices We Can Make” will be presented Thursday, October 1 at 7 p.m. in the Library’s BorgWarner Community Room. This program is free and open to the public.

As the inaugural program of the Sandra Lipsitz Bem Lecture Series on Compassionate Care and End-of-Life Issues, Wood’s talk will be facilitated by Nina Miller, former executive director of Hospicare. Through a question and answer format, the talk will explore the distinctions between hospice care, palliative sedation and physician-assisted suicide.

Wood is a faculty member of the University of Washington and practiced internal medicine for 40 years. He spent more than two decades as director of HIV/AIDS for Public Health of Seattle and King County and is a member of the board for Compassion and Choices of Washington.

  

The Bem Lecture Series has been made possible through an endowment by Daryl Bem, husband of noted psychologist, Sandra Bem.  Through an annual lecture, given by outstanding professionals in the field of end-of-life issues, Hospicare endeavors to raise community awareness of death, dying and the possibilities and limits of contemporary medicine.

The second program is a community reading of Atul Gawande’s best-selling book, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.”  Dr. Gawande’s book strives to expand understanding of the facts about mortality and the limits of contemporary medicine.

In a review of “Being Mortal,” Oliver Sacks proclaimed, “‘Being Mortal’ is not only wise and deeply moving, it is an essential and insightful book for our times, as one would expect from Atul Gawande, one of our finest physician writers.”

Copies of the book are available in multiple formats at TCPL, and volunteers will be available to facilitate discussions for existing book clubs. Book club members interested in scheduling a volunteer-guided discussion of the book for their club should contact Carrie Wheeler-Carmenatty at (607) 272-4557 extension 248 or cwheeler@tcpl.org.

These programs are designed to encourage respectful, engaged dialogue on this important topic.

For more information about hospice, contact Melissa Travis Dunham at mdunham@hospicare.org or 607-272-0212. For more information about TCPL, contact Carrie Wheeler-Carmenatty at (607) 272-4557 extension 248 or cwheeler@tcpl.org.