All Events
Events and Webinars Page
Planetary Health in Hospice Palliative Care Building Climate Resilience and Low Carbon Health Systems
Join us in exploring the topic of Planetary Health in Hospice Palliative Care. This session will introduce you to ways to prepare for climate-related emergencies and how to create climate-informed health programs. Presenters will share, from their British Columbia context, their experiences in kidney care to explore impacts of climate-related emergencies and how to create climate-informed health programs across the spectrum of palliative care including Hospice care. Come to learn from their experiences, tools they have developed or adapted, and share how you too are working towards creating a culture of environmental sustainability across palliative care settings.
Inking the Bond
Part of our Grief & Bereavement Literacy ECHO Series
This talk is a conversation about tattoos, grief, and growth. Stories will be drawn from research and personal experience. The three speakers are all social workers who love to talk about tattoos, the intersection of taboo, the connection to the deceased and the way they can contribute to the process of meaning making.
Poster you can print and share linked here.
Presenter: Susan Cadell, PhD, RSW Professor, School of Social Work, Renison University College
This series is for anyone interested in increasing their knowledge around grief and bereavement to support them personally or in their professional careers.
Exploring the Power of Equine Therapy in Grief Support
Part of our Grief & Bereavement Literacy ECHO Series
This session will have a presentation with time for Q & A.
Poster you can print and share linked here.
Presenter: Veronica Tod, Grief Support Manager at Abbotsford Hospice and Grief Support Society
This series is for anyone interested in increasing their knowledge around grief and bereavement to support them personally or in their professional careers.
Grief and Loss Along the Dementia Journey
Part of our Grief & Bereavement Literacy ECHO Series
Care partners often experience a continuous and profound sense of loss as they walk alongside a person living with dementia. This webinar will delve into the unique challenges that care partners face, illuminating the multifaceted nature of grief throughout the dementia journey. Participants will explore how grief manifests differently at various stages, from early diagnosis to advanced disease progression. We will also address the often-overlooked emotional toll on care partners and provide strategies for recognition and support.
Poster you can print and share linked here.
Presenter: Susan Prosser, Provincial Coordinator of Education at Alzheimer’s Society
This series is for anyone interested in increasing their knowledge around grief and bereavement to support them personally or in their professional careers.
Experiencing Grief as a Health Care Provider
Part of our Grief & Bereavement Literacy ECHO Series
This session will have a presentation followed by a discussion with people with lived experience. Poster you can print and share linked here.
Presenter: Laura Finkler-Kemeny, RN Clinical Lead, Serious Illness Communication, BC Centre for Palliative Care
This series is for anyone interested in increasing their knowledge around grief and bereavement to support them personally or in their professional careers.
Celebrating Collaboration and Impact: BCCPC and UBC Supporting International Medical Graduates (IMG)
2025 marks 10 years of the provincial UBC IMG Resident Orientation, and BCCPC’s Serious Illness Conversation (SIC) Workshop has been an integral session in the orientation since 2019. Since then, a total of 360 IMG residents have participated in the SIC Workshop as part of the orientation.
The Serious Illness Workshop helps clinicians elicit the patient’s understanding of their illness, their decision-making preferences, share information on prognosis or function, understand goals, fears, explore views on trade-offs and impaired function, and identify wishes and next steps for family involvement.
The SIC Workshop has proven to be incredibly valuable for IMGs entering residency in Canada. They report gaining confidence in initiating difficult end-of-life goals conversations with patients, and being motivated to incorporate the SIC framework into their practice.
Here are some comments received over the years:
Great resource for IMGs, as the method of breaking bad news and having difficult conversations was taught in a great manner, important as some IMGs like myself have come from countries where this is not practiced, and having someone demonstrate it live was excellent and made the material real and easy to understand.
AMAZING BREAKOUT SESSIONS. Really enjoyed having the time to practice SIC skills and the facilitator we had did an amazing job.
Very helpful and wonderful, engaging workshop! This is a heavy topic that was presented in a palatable and accessible way! Thank you!
Very good when they had a live simulated conversation in front of us, instead of showing a pre-recorded video. Really showed at-the-time authenticity and how a real conversation would flow rather than appearing very scripted. Thank you!
This session was EXCELLENT, I really appreciated being able to role play and see how going through the script would feel.
Find out more about our Serious Illness Conversations resources.
Envisioning Compassionate, Dementia Inclusive Communities
A University of British Columbia-Okanagan research team, partnering with the BC Centre for Palliative Care (BCCPC), has kicked off an exciting nationwide project bringing together three important social health movements—compassionate communities, dementia-friendly communities, and volunteer navigation (Nav-CARE) –to reduce stigma, raise awareness, and offer empowering supports for people living with dementia to age in place.
With a contribution from Health Canada and led by Dr. Barb Pesut from UBC-O, the team is collaborating with six Canadian organizations to envision, implement, and evaluate compassionate, dementia-inclusive initiatives. Supported by expertise from the BCCPC and the Building Capacity (in dementia) Project based out of UBC-Vancouver, the team has developed a customized toolkit for groups developing these compassionate dementia-inclusive community initiatives. It includes a practical set of steps to follow as well as an exploration of key issues to consider when building relationships, convening conversations, implementing programs, and aiming to sustain the initiatives long term.
To spread the word, partner organizations will create inter-organizational leadership teams who will in turn work with advisory boards of key stakeholders, including people with lived experience – people living with dementia and their care partners. These leadership teams will implement interventions tailored to their community, and evaluate the results. To ensure the success of the dementia-inclusive community interventions, the participating organizations will provide volunteers with training in the internationally acclaimed Nav-CARE (Navigation, Connecting, Advocating, Resourcing, Engaging).
Frailty and Dementia: Essential Conversations with Families
Session resources
- coming soon!
For seniors with life-limiting illness and their families, we need gentle but realistic conversations about their medical conditions, changes in their abilities and function, their quality of life, and goals of care. With a gentle approach to medical truth-telling, we can avoid potentially burdensome medical interventions, prevent unnecessary suffering, and empower families to help provide the best quality of life possible for their loved one. Dr Trevor Janz will model these conversations with families for us; about MOST status, CPR and ICU, feeding tubes in stroke and late dementia, falls and hip fracture, pneumonia, dehydration and bladder infections, and avoiding hospitalization
Presenters: Dr. Trevor Janz
Unlocking Dignity: How to Improve the Reintegration Experience of Justice-involved People with Life-limiting Illnesses into Community
Session resources
- Session presentation slides
- Session summary notes
- Presentation recording: YouTube
Reintegrating into the community after incarceration is a complex process that requires a coordinated, inter-agency and interdisciplinary approach. For justice-involved individuals facing serious or life-limiting illnesses, access to patient-centred palliative care is essential—not only for symptom management but also for ensuring dignity, continuity of care, and social support. This session will create a space to share how this is currently being done in our communities, identify existing gaps and challenges, and discuss innovative strategies to enhance access to care. Through shared experiential knowledge and collaboration, we will envision pathways that ensure justice-involved individuals receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
Presenters:
- Iridian Grenada, Advisory Consultant, Justice Reintegration
- Mar’yana Fisher, RN, PhD(c) Palliative Nurse Clinician
The intended audience for this session is healthcare providers and community organizations.
ECHO year in review and looking ahead to 2025
More ECHO crossover than ever
In 2024, we noticed that more than ever, ECHO participants were taking a wider look at our ECHO offerings and “crossing over” to explore multiple sessions and multiple series throughout the year. In addition to those participating in both our open series (where anyone can choose which or how many sessions to attend) and our closed/cohort series (where a defined group of learners progress through the series together), these crossover “super users” enjoyed the flexibility to attend whatever they felt would be of interest to their work. An additional benefit was the mixing of professional backgrounds, sectors and interests who attended together and learned from each other.
We continued to work with our external partners to offer two cohort-style series in 2024. These are focused on a specific care team/role, and the topics covered come directly from those participating. Staying with the same ECHO cohort promotes networking, sharing and learning from others working in the same field. For example, the Advance Practice for Psychosocial Care Providers cohort offered six sessions tailored specifically for this group, and the Provincial Palliative Care Coordinates cohort provided a learning space suited to their needs and interests
Looking ahead to 2025
Excited for 2025, we are developing a full schedule – ideally one ECHO offering every week from February to the end of the year. Many of our series are continuing — including Grief and Bereavement Literacy, All Together, and Updates and Innovations in Essential Conversations for the Health Care Team — so keep an eye on our website for session topics and registration details. Additionally, we are cultivating relationships with partners on new topics, to pepper into the schedule more standalone sessions and some limited series. We are excited to share that the first of these will be partnering with the Canadian Red Cross who will be presenting in February:
The Power of Social Connection: Explore the Evidence-based Impact of Friendly Calls on people, communities, and the healthcare system
We look forward to continuing to work with our hub partners who put some much energy and effort into crafting evidence-based sessions that spark conversation and connection with our participants. We are also grateful to all of you who have attended an ECHO session in 2024. The all teach, all learn model is what makes ECHO a special learning platform. We couldn’t do it without you!
There are so many ECHO learning opportunities to come. Join our mailing list so you don’t miss a single one: echo@bc-cpc.ca. You can also check our webpage for upcoming session information.
