2025 Midwest Regional Conference on Palliative & End of Life Care Sessions

Join us for this presentation by DHSS on 10 Ten deficiencies, survey readiness and bereavement deficiencies.

LEADING A FAMILY GOAL SETTING CONFERENCE FOR SERIOUSLY ILL AND DYING PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES 1. What is the need for this type of training? Clinicians who care for seriously ill and dying patients need to meet with patients and families to discuss prognosis and make recommendations to continue, withhold or withdraw life sustaining treatments. Clinicians often struggle with these conversations and the medical-legal, emotional and conflictual issues that arise. Failure to successfully lead these conversations leads to: • Uncertainty, anxiety and unnecessary suffering by patients and family • Avoidable Emergency Department and ICU admissions • Prolonged hospital and ICU length of stay • Excessive use of non-beneficial medical interventions • Excessive non-reimbursable costs to hospitals (care exceeds DRG payments) • Moral distress among hospital staff / staff turnover Timothy Jessick, DO – Dr. Jessick has been a Palliative Medicine Physician for over 10 years. He is board certified in Palliative Care and Family Medicine. He is the co-founder and Past President of the Palliative Care Network of Wisconsin and a member of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and the American Academy of Family Physicians. Dr Jessick received his Doctor of Osteopathy from Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1994 and his Bachelor of Science in Exercise Physiology from the University of Wisconsin –Madison in 1990. He is a Clinical Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. He has presented both locally and nationally on the topics of palliative care, pain management, advance directives, mortality and end of life care and participated in numerous initiatives related to these topics. He has also trained over 700 physicians and providers in goals of care conversations. Dr. Jessick is currently a consultant for Primary Palliative Care Education LLC..

LEARNING OBJECTIVES/OUTCOMES: Describe the potential benefits of hospice for the terminally ill prisoner, the prisoner hospice volunteer, and the family of the terminally ill prisoner. Review the technical, logistical, and sociopolitical difficulties in setting up a prison-based, prisoner-run hospice program in a maximum-security prison. Differentiate between the care provided by trained prisoner hospice volunteers and the non-hospice, non-correctional alternative. FILM SYNOPSIS: Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall: is a moving cinéma vérité documentary that breaks through the walls of one of America’s oldest maximum security prisons to tell the story of the final months in the life of Jack Hall, a terminally ill person who has been incarcerated for 20+ years and the hospice volunteers, they themselves incarcerated men, who care for him. The film draws from footage shot over a six-month period behind the walls of the Iowa State Penitentiary and provides a fascinating and often poignant account of how the hospice experience can profoundly touch even the forsaken lives of the incarcerated.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES/OUTCOMES: Describe the potential benefits of hospice for the terminally ill prisoner, the prisoner hospice volunteer, and the family of the terminally ill prisoner. Review the technical, logistical, and sociopolitical difficulties in setting up a prison-based, prisoner-run hospice program in a maximum-security prison. Differentiate between the care provided by trained prisoner hospice volunteers and the non-hospice, non-correctional alternative.

Moral injury refers to the psychological and spiritual distress that occurs when a person engages in, witnesses, or is unable to prevent actions that violate their deeply held moral beliefs and values. Though not formally recognized as a psychological disorder, it has long been indicated in the research as a significant contributor to negative mental health outcomes, especially in professional caregivers. In this presentation, we will learn what the research says about the sources of moral injury for healthcare personnel along with its impact on their physical and mental health. We will then discuss steps that professional caregivers can take to mitigate the negative impact of moral injury in order to help them care more effectively for their patients—and for themselves.