This two-day professional workshop will provide participants with a unique opportunity to learn and experience a novel and clinically robust Family Dignity Intervention (FDI) for cultivating existential wholeness among terminally-ill patients and their families facing the end of life. FDI is founded upon an empirical foundation on dignified palliative care in Asia and informed by Dignity Therapy; it comprises a highly-focus meaning-oriented interview with individual patient-caregiver dyad that is recorded, transcribed, and edited into a legacy document for sharing with the dyad’s family. A recent Randomized Controlled Trial with 140 participants provided strong evidence of FDI’s efficacy in improving patients’ quality of life, hope, positive life outlook and life meaning, as well as for decreasing caregivers’ stress and depressive symptoms while elevating quality of life and positive life outlook. FDI is an innovative and effective intervention for advancing holistic palliative care in Singapore.

Through mini-lectures, role-plays, hands-on practices, experiential exercises and case sharing, participants will learn the theoretical foundation, clinical skills and techniques of FDI for facilitating open and compassionate dialogue between patients and their carers that promote appreciation and reconciliation, foster relational bonds, and elicit transgenerational wisdoms to be shared across generations through the creation of a family legacy document. Participants will also learn ways to incorporate FDI into the provision of Advance Care Planning.

This 2-hour introductory talk aims to help participants to:

• Understand the principles of pain assessment and management in palliative care
• Be aware of commonly used opioids and its side effects in cancer pain management

9 half-days course, with 1 day clinical attachment, aimed  to increase participants’ confidence and competence in caring for patients with life-limiting conditions.

The two-day workshop provides participants with a unique opportunity to obtain a holistic understanding of burnout as well as a true appreciation of self-care via an immersive experience with Mindful-Compassion Art Therapy (MCAT).

As our population ages, more people will be developing chronic medical conditions which will progress and eventually lead to death. The challenges of managing a patient with advanced non-cancer conditions can be fairly different from caring for someone who is suffering from advanced cancer. The 2-day course will highlight these challenges and focus on palliative care approaches to help healthcare professionals manage non-cancer end-of-life care better.