Palliative Medicine & End of Life, Including Topics in Neurology Cruise

Palliative care medicine as a specialty has become established in the last eleven years. Most frequently, providers and patients understand palliative medicine as predominantly about dying/hospice patients. Although this is a significant role that palliative providers play, palliative medicine has equal significance in critical conditions with life ending potentials but well before life finality.
The purpose of these talks will be to explore the range and science of palliative practice and in so doing, enhance the participants capacity to seek palliative consultation and apply palliative techniques to their patients with such conditions.
Participants will gain from case reviews direct knowledge of interactive techniques to assist the human management of clinical situations of decline.
Focus too will be on the specifics of pharmaceutical management of pain in these conditions.

Lectures will also cover neurologic aspects of palliative care with a focus on disorders of consciousness, stroke, Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and brain death. These topics were selected as examples of conditions where clinicians should be thinking of patient values and goal and the discussion they and the entire clinical team should be having with their patient. The desired outcome of the lecture series is that those attending will have the awareness to initiate a discussion about care goals, be able to identify the course and associated symptoms of neurologic illness, have the tools to have a meaningful and comfortable discussion with a patient and family, and leave with a plan to implement change on their return home.
Tucked into the far southwestern corner of Europe, the nations of the Iberian Peninsula are home to diverse cultural riches and myriad opportunities for outdoor exploration. See the dramatic cliffs and turquoise waters of Portugal's Algarve. As an added bonus, the food and drink in Spain and Portugal is life-altering — from Spanish tapas to bold wines.