Wednesday 18 June 2025
On Wednesday, 18 June, we are offering you the option to attend two workshops at an additional cost of R1 495 (Early Bird rate) for the full day, including lunch and tea/coffee. There will be six workshops in total with three running in the morning and three in the afternoon. Delegates can choose to attend any one workshop in the morning and another in the afternoon.
Workshop titles are as follows:
| Number | Morning Workshops 08h30 – 12h30 | Number | Afternoon Workshops 13h30 – 17h30 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Palliative Care: A Practical Approach | 4 | The Importance of Communication, Language and Culture in Palliative Care |
| 2 | Meaning Making at End of Life: How to Find Comfort and Peace | 5 | A Toolkit for Building Moral Resilience |
| 3 | Integrating a Palliative Care Approach in the Face of Uncertainty across Perinatal and Neonatal Settings | 6 | Navigating Difficult Choices and Conversations at the End of a Child’s Life – Compassionate Extubation |
Workshop Descriptions
Workshop 1: Palliative Care: A Practical Approach
An interactive workshop on practical skills in palliative care
Facilitated by Sr Kash Raghubar and Registered Nurses from Highway Hospice
It is all too often that we hear “it is the simple things in life that matter most”. This statement cannot be truer than when a person is faced with an illness that cannot be treated for cure and is continually progressing towards an end.
With progression of illness comes a decline in one’s physical ability to mobilise or to care for oneself. Nothing can be more demoralising than not being able to perform one’s own tasks of daily living or to control one’s pain and other debilitating symptoms.
This change with disease progression has a domino negative effect on carers and loved ones, making all involved feel a sense of helplessness.
As much as Palliative Care is provided holistically, this workshop will focus on practical skills required in coping with the ever-changing landscape of the patient and family, as the patient progresses through the three categories within Palliative Care.
Some of the topics to be covered in the workshop will be the practical management of patients needing:
- Syringe drivers
- Wound care
- Stoma care
- Pressure skin care
- Management of lymphoedema
- Nutrition and PEG feeds
- Mouth care
In addition, the workshop will cover practical skills in satisfying hygiene needs.
Our role in palliative care is to support the patient and family, to teach them how to cope within their particular situation, and not to cripple them by taking over and creating codependence.
This interactive workshop aims to equip healthcare providers and carers with practical tools and skills to support the provision of dignified care for patients at a vulnerable time in their lives.
Focusing on practical skills such as those addressed in this workshop, will have a positive impact on the physical comfort and psychological wellbeing of both patients and their loved ones.
Workshop 2: Meaning Making at End of Life: How to Find Comfort and Peace
An interactive workshop on spirituality in palliative care
Facilitated by Hanneke Lubbe
Introduction: Clinicians and healthcare workers often express feelings of uncertainty and sometimes apprehension in speaking with the dying patient and their family regarding topics of spirituality or meaning making at end of life. This hesitation may stem from not wanting to cause offence or not knowing when and if the topic should be raised, which leaves professional providers wondering about their role in helping those who are dying and their loved ones to make meaning at end of life. Consequently, there is often a gap in effectively addressing the spiritual needs of patients, which can impact their sense of comfort and peace, as well as their family’s ability to find closure.
This workshop is designed to bridge that gap by providing participants with a comprehensive understanding of spirituality in palliative care. It will focus on equipping healthcare professionals with the skills and tools necessary to navigate spiritual conversations and to recognise different spiritual needs of patients, with confidence and sensitivity.
Outcome: The participants will be left with a deeper understanding of the role of spirituality in palliative care. The tools discussed will familiarise participants with known spiritual assessment tools, and participants will also gain insight from case studies demonstrating the effects of loss and grief on patients’ ability to find meaning; and how effective communication and active listening can elicit families to tell their stories, and in doing that find meaning and comfort – for both patients and their families as well as the healthcare workers involved.
By the end of the workshop, participants will be better equipped to support patients and families in finding meaning, hope, and peace at the end of life, and to address spirituality as a fundamental component of palliative care with both competence and compassion, acknowledging the complex and multidimensional experiences of the patients.
Workshop 3: Integrating a Palliative Care Approach in the Face of Uncertainty Across Perinatal and Neonatal Settings
An interactive workshop on recognising when a palliative approach is appropriate and tools for implementation
Facilitated by Sr Tracy Rawlins
Recognition of the need for palliative care during pregnancy, at birth and any time after birth is an imperative for the provision of exemplary care.
This workshop aims to equip healthcare providers, in any setting, with the skills to recognise and implement the key elements of palliative care that focus on empowering families and enhancing comfort, care and compassion.
With a focus on perinatal and neonatal palliative care, participants will leave the workshop with a deeper understanding of how to recognize when a palliative care approach is needed, along with resources and practical tools for developing flexible care plans, memory making, legacy planning, and support for anticipatory grief.
They will also gain insights into effective teamwork and communication strategies to ensure that the care provided is both compassionate and comprehensive, meeting the needs of the child and their family throughout their journey.
Workshop 5: A Toolkit for Building Moral Resilience
An interactive workshop on ethics in palliative care
Facilitated by Dr Heidi Matisonn, Senior Lecturer, The Ethics Lab, UCT. Assisted by Dr Shannon Odell and Dr Colleen Cox, PALPRAC.
Healthcare professionals often navigate a landscape of competing demands – balancing their obligations to patients, employers, and themselves. Such challenging environments can lead to moral suffering, manifesting as distress, injury, or even burnout. This workshop will introduce healthcare providers to the tools of philosophy as applicable in healthcare – critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and conceptual analysis – and through practical cases and examples, show participants how to use these tools to address complex issues particularly in palliative care, and how to build moral resilience in the clinical setting.
The workshop will allow for interactive discussions around ethical challenges experienced in palliative healthcare, such as withholding or withdrawing futile therapy, and decision-making at the end of life. Participants would be encouraged to consider the philosophical tools provided to analyse and manage ethical issues and moral dilemmas experienced in their own healthcare settings, and to feel more equipped to address such challenges.
Workshop 4: The Importance of Communication, Language and Culture in Palliative Care
An interactive workshop on enhancing culturally meaningful care
Facilitated by Dr Welly den Hollander
In Palliative Care there is a need to work in partnership with patients, their families and communities to identify and negotiate culturally meaningful care. This requires communication patterns, decision-making processes, choices in preferences, understanding of different meanings, belief systems and cultural practices and formation of care practices.
This workshop provides a broad perspective on challenges in communication experienced by patients, family members and health care professionals. The workshop will address:
- The role of the Speech-Language Pathologist in facilitating communication through the use of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
- The role of expressive arts and introduce art, music, poetry, silence and movement as ways of communication
- The role of narrative therapy in couple counselling and working with diverse family dynamics
- The role of body language and touch in communication between health care professionals, patients, family members and their communities
- The significance of cultural and metaphorical language (and linguistic considerations) for dialogue, understanding and healing particularly where significant and life changing conversations have to be had.
Participants will gain comprehensive skills in assisting patients and their families by means of case studies and practical exercises.
Presenters:
- Karyn Casey (Speech Therapist)
- Tayla Oshry (Speech Therapist)
- Welly den Hollander (Medical Social Worker)
- Hilary Grey (CEO Knysna Sedgefield hospice)
- Nokulinda Mkhize (Traditional Healer)
Workshop 6: Navigating Difficult Choices and Conversations at the End of a Child’s Life
An interactive workshop on compassionate extubation
Facilitated by Dr Julia Ambler
Introduction:
Decision-making for children and infants is a profound medical, ethical and legal quagmire. Children and infants are unable to express their desires, wishes or what they feel is in their best interests. All decision-making for this vulnerable group is made by caregivers and healthcare workers.
When a child’s death is inevitable, as healthcare workers we need to ensure that the child and their caregivers experience the death in the most comforting manner, minimising any associated pain, discomfort, guilt and self-doubt.
Compassionate extubation is determined to be in the patient’s best interests after healthcare workers have explored all medical, psychological and ethical dilemmas. Despite the acknowledgement that this is in the patient’s best interests, for the healthcare worker it can pose personal and medical challenges.
This workshop aims to assist healthcare workers who are making these difficult decisions with practical resources to manage the situation as peacefully as possible, ensuring the patient is comfortable as well as the caregivers and healthcare workers.
Outcome:
The participants will be left with a clearer understanding of the ethical grounds of extubation. They will understand the psychosocial issues related to extubation and the communication skills required as well as the medical procedures during extubation. Participants will also experience some practical self-care techniques that can be utilised in all facets of their work.
Presenters:
- Dr Julia Ambler – Umduduzi – Hospice Care for Children / UKZN / PalPrac
- Dr Samantha Govender – General Justice Gizenga Mpanza Regional Hospital
- Tracey Brand – Umduduzi – Hospice Care for Children
- Sr Alex Daniels – ICPCN