Hospice seminar: How you die can depend on where you live in Ireland, a conference in Dublin has been told.
Orla Keegan, Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) development and training manager, said there was a need to raise awareness about the issue and to examine the conditions in which people in Ireland were dying. There was a lot of inequality, she said.
Ms Keegan was speaking in Dublin last Friday where she was introducing a programme of talks at the foundation's Dublin headquarters. The initiative marked the first World Hospice and Palliative Care Day which took place on October 8th.
"Information is key to action nationally and globally because information allows people to be advocates for themselves, to know what exists and ask for what they want. Information and education empower the health professionals caring for people who will not be cured. Today is about sharing information needs about death, dying and bereavement," she said.
The audience of professionals, voluntary hospice visitors and the public received a rundown on bereavement information available in Ireland and Britain, comprising all aspects of loss, with handouts, ideas and website addresses. The librarians in the audience had glimpses of a brave new world as Irish-born Denise Brady, librarian at St Christopher Hospice, London, showcased the treasury she has amassed - 5,000 books on dying, running the gamut, she said, "between love and science", copious journals, articles, videos, archive material and more.
Ms Brady paid tribute to Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement who died in July aged 87. "She once said 'I have learned much from my patients. Listening is very important.' A man once asked her if he was going to die, and when she said 'yes', he asked if it was difficult for her to say. 'It is hard to be told and it's hard to tell,' she said - an important theme in our work," said Ms Brady.
How we handle end-of-life care and communication is becoming increasingly relevant with numbers aged 65 and over expected to double by 2021. About 28,000 people die in Ireland annually, 7,000 of them in hospices, where the focus has shifted from cure to offering the best quality of life for the time remaining.
Librarian Caroline Pfeifer detailed the outreach service launched by the IHF library. The library has books on death, bereavement, suicide and stories for children on loss. A resource package, including reading lists, has been sent to the 377 public libraries nationally (see www.hospice-foundation.ie). The library in Nassau Street also has a public lending facility with an administration fee of €5.
Mervyn Taylor took the debate out of books and into life. He is director of Care for People Dying In Hospital, a two-year pilot project based at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda. Its aim was to bring hospice philosophy into hospitals, he said.