Waipuna Hospice to host palliative care symposium for hospice awareness week

Waipuna Hospice symposium on pallative care is happening in May. Photo / Supplied

Waipuna Hospice will host a symposium on palliative care in May to mark the start of Hospice Awareness Week.

The topic will be "Palliative care in our compassionate community", according to a release from the Te Puna-based hospice.

The event will bring together industry leaders to share their knowledge and experience on palliative care, with the hopes of creating a more compassionatecommunity to support people at the end of their lives.

Waipuna Hospice chief executive Richard Thurlow explains the hospice hopes to enable all people to live well within their communities to the very end of their lives.

"Our compassionate communities symposium will focus on a full community approach to end of life care, where caring for one another at times of need, loss, or crisis becomes the task and responsibility of everyone.

"It's about seeing death and dying not just as a medical issue, but a social issue too."

He said dying, like birth, was a human event everyone has to go through. Therefore, care of the dying is everyone's business.

The full-day symposium will feature a range of keynote presentations and discussions from industry leaders including Bay of Plenty District Health Board chief executive Pete Chandler and Starship Children Hospital paediatric palliative care specialist Dr. Emily Chang.

Other speakers include those from Te Ārai Palliative care and End of Life Research Group, Hospice New Zealand, University of Auckland and the medical lead for paediatrics in the Bay of Plenty Dr Justin Wilde.

Topics for the day range from caring for kaumātua at end of life and learning from the past to shape the future, to paediatric palliative care and how the end of life care fits into a compassionate community.

"It's important to us that our symposium supports an engaged audience, and people walk away with a better understanding of how palliative care fits into the community and the role they play," Thurlow said.

"We want to create a space where questions are not only encouraged, but answered."

The afternoon panel session will see speakers joined by hospice field experts to discuss topics and questions presented by the audience.

The event sold out in 2018 and 2019. It is open to the community.

Tickets are available on the Waipuna Hospice website.

Palliative Care in our Compassionate Community Symposium

The event will be held at Waipuna Hospice on Te Puna Station Rd, on May 17 from 8am to 3pm.