What began in 2019 as a one-day educational opportunity for healthcare professionals to learn more about transitioning treatment from curative to palliative has evolved into a dynamic annual conference appealing to people within and outside the healthcare industry. This year’s End of Life Symposium, to be held February 5-7, will cover topics ranging from health disparities in end-of-life care to the role of hospice, and an exploration of grief and bereavement.

“Of course a lot of this is still about palliative care approaches in various areas of medicine, but also very much about communication: How do you have end-of-life conversations with a patient who’s dying of cancer and their family? How do you draw out what a person’s values are? How have they lived their life, and therefore how does that translate to how they want to die?” says Compassion & Choices Director of Clinical Outreach Robert Drake, who will discuss the importance of integrating emergency and palliative medicine as well as practicing forgiveness at the symposium.

Other features of the event include:

• A discussion about telehealth with Dr. Michael Fratkin

• A presentation on COVID perspectives with Dr. Satheesh Gunaga

• A keynote lecture on patient-directed care by Compassion & Choices President and CEO Kim Callinan

The End of Life Symposium grew largely from the vision of Dr. Chandana Banerjee, a member of both Compassion & Choices’ board of directors and Healthcare Advisory Council who also serves as director of graduate medical education as well as assistant clinical professor in hospice and palliative medicine at City of Hope National Medical Center and Cancer Institute. She explains, “I always wanted to put together a conference that was focused specifically on the end of life — a conference that would not only attract clinicians but other people so that as a society we start changing the way we look at the end of life.”

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