24 research outputs found
Psychedelic Therapy for Serious Illness and End of Life Care
Get PDFWebinar: September 28, 2023, 4-6 pm.
Articles about psychedelic treatments for serious illness and end of life care seem to be everywhere. Rarely a week goes by without a newly published study appearing in a peer-reviewed medical journal, usually followed by reports of the study in prominent news outlets. In this webinar, we will present recent research on this topic, provide an update on the current legislation efforts to legalize these treatments in Washington State, and reflect on proposed treatment guidelines how legalization may impact treatment plans.
Panelists include:
Dr. David Gruenwald, Medical Director of the Palliative Care and Hospice Service at VA Puget Sound Health Care System
Lisa Yeager, MSW, LICSW, CPTR Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker
Jesse Salomon, J.D. Democratic State Senator representing the 32nd Legislative District in Washington
Moderated by Devyani Chandran, Director, Palliative Care Institute, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washingto
Medical Aid in Dying: Challenges and Solutions
No full textMedical aid in dying (MAID) is currently legal in ten US states and the District of Columbia. The most frequent reasons for requesting MAID are typically loss of autonomy, decreasing ability to participate in pleasurable activities, impaired quality of life, and loss of dignity.
As of 2021, nearly 20% of hospital beds in community settings nationally are provided by a religiously affiliated healthcare organization. In Washington State, over 45% of Washington state\u27s hospital beds are in facilities that are under religious directives,
In most of faith based systems, developing a compassionate and appropriate response to patients who request MAID has been challenging, raising both clinical and public health challenges and concerns regarding how health care providers, institutions, and medical systems will handle requests for AID.
This webinar will present the current landscape of MAID in Washington state and use case studies from three different faith based systems to explore these challenges and suggest some possible strategies and solutions.
Panelists include:
Hilary Walker, Advance Care Planning Coordinator, PeaceHealth
Judy Kinney, Executive Director, End of Life Washington, Seattle, Washington
Gregg Vandekieft, Executive Medical Director, Palliative Practice Group and TelePC, Providence Institute for Human Caring, Olympia, Washington
Barbara Morris, Geriatrician at STRIDE Community Health Center, Denver, Colorado
and will be moderated by Devyani Chandran, Director, Palliative Care Institute, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
Accreditation Statement:
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements of the Washington State Medical Association through the joint providership of PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center and Western Washington University Palliative Care Institute. PeaceHealth St. Joseph is accredited by the WSMA to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
PeaceHealth St. Joseph designates this live activity for a maximum of 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
This activity meets the criteria for up to 2 hour of Category I CME credits to satisfy the relicensure requirements of the Washington State Medical Quality Assurance Commission
Webinar: Breaking Bad News to Patients
No full textBreaking bad news is one of a provider’s most difficult duties, yet medical education typically offers little formal preparation for this daunting task. In this free Zoom webinar, a panel of practitioners will provide advice and share case studies to explore best practices for this challenging responsibility, including techniques to facilitate breaking bad news, offer realistic hope based on the patient\u27s goals and support patients and their families after the diagnosis has been shared.
Panelists include:
C. Bree Johnston, MD, Director, Palliative Care, Skagit Regional Health.
Eddie Harrod, MDiv, Chaplain, Whatcom Hospice, PeaceHealth
Koreen Fish, MSW, Coordinator for the Outpatient Palliative Care Team for PeaceHealth.
Claudia Fischer, RN, MSN, Program Coordinator, Inpatient Palliative Care Team, PeaceHealth.
Moderator:
Devyani Chandran, PHD, Director, Palliative Care Institute and Associate Professor of Human Services at Western Washington University.
Accreditation Statement:
This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements of the Washington State Medical Association through the joint providership of PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center and Western Washington University. PeaceHealth St. Joseph is accredited by the WSMA to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
PeaceHealth St. Joseph designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
This activity meets the criteria for up to 1.0 hour of Category I CME credit to satisfy the relicensure requirements of the Washington State Medical Quality Assurance Commission
Countering Terrorism: Building a Common Approach in SAARC
No full textThis book is the result of a project on Countering Terrorism: Building a Common Approach in SAARC undertaken by the Consortium of South Asian Think Tanks (COSATT) led by IPCS in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), 2009-2010. The project sought to evolve a common agenda among leading think tanks in SAARC on measures to counter terrorism in the region. The aim was to evaluate a regional approach to counter terrorism, identify processes and structures that can help realize the objective, and draw up a common plan of action based on broad set of unifying principles and interests.
The book provides an assessment of the nature of terrorist activity in the major SAARC countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India. It identifies the major issues and trends of terrorism as emerging in these countries with a focus on their cross border linkages and geo-strategic dynamics. This is accompanied by a critique of the existing mechanisms in the region to counter terrorism, both at a national and regional level followed by recommendations on strengthening the SAARC counter terrorism regime. Emphasis has been laid on drawing national perspectives on the subject by inviting views from each member country and holding a series of consultations before finalizing the recommendations.
The book is useful both as a reference point to scholars, academics and researchers interested in studying the regional counter terrorism efforts in South Asia as also for policy makers and government officials keen on strengthening the existing mechanisms.
Apart from the book, the project also resulted in the publication of a Policy Brief that lays down recommendations on strengthening the SAARC counter terrorism mechanism. The Brief was submitted to the External Affairs ministries of the SAARC member countries close to the 14nth SAARC summit held in April 2010 in Bhutan
Typological variation in the ergative morphology of Indo-Aryan languages
No full textWhile New Indo-Aryan languages are a common example of morphological ergativity, the range of variation in ergative marking and agreement among these languages has not been examined in detail. The goals of this article are twofold. We first present a typology of ergative marking and agreement in Indo-Aryan languages, demonstrating that a progressive loss of ergative marking has occurred to varying degrees in different systems. This process is manifested in two distinct strategies of markedness reduction: loss of overt subject marking in the nominal domain and loss of marked agreement in the verbal domain. Using the framework of Optimality Theory, we account for the typology in terms of universal subhierarchies of markedness. Extending the analysis to dialect variation in one language, Marathi, we show that the dialect typology parallels the crosslinguistic typology, but only within the range permitted by changes already present in the parent language (Old Marathi). Furthermore, the dialect typology includes additional hybrid case-agreement systems predicted by our analysis. Author(s): Ashwini Deo 1, 1, | Devyani Sharma 2,
GraSPI: Extensible software for the graph-based quantification of morphology in organic electronics
Get PDFWe describe GraSPI - extensible graph-based software implemented as a C/C++ package. GraSPI computes a large set of descriptors relevant to organic electronics given a segmented 2D or 3D microstructure. The package represents a microstructure as an equivalent graph and harnesses algorithms from graph theory to compute those descriptors efficiently. It also includes a suite of tools for converting data between various formats and post-processing the raw results from the graph analysis. Herein, we provide illustrative examples of GraSPI’s capabilities in extracting microstructure descriptors and demonstrate the advantages that a graph-based approach affords via computational complexity analysis.This article is published asJivani, Devyani, Jaroslaw Zola, Baskar Ganapathysubramanian, and Olga Wodo. "GraSPI: Extensible software for the graph-based quantification of morphology in organic electronics." SoftwareX 17 (2022): 100969. DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2021.100969. Copyright 2021 The Author(s).Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Posted with permission
Older Adults with HIV/AIDS: Experiences of Stigma-The Use of Personal Strengths
Get PDFPh.D. University of Kansas, Social Welfare 2009This dissertation explores the stigma experiences of older adults who have HIV/AIDS, the personal strengths and other responses they have to these experiences, and whether they experienced personal growth as a result of their responses to stigma. A qualitative, phenomenological approach has been used in this dissertation. Older adults experienced stigma from family and friends and in the workplace. Some older adults responded to stigma by being resilient and empowering themselves with the support of family and friends. Older adults also had other responses to stigma such as non- disclosure of HIV/AIDS status and isolation. Some older adults experienced personal growth, for instance where they wished to give back some of their time and skills to the community. The results support the use of older adults and their families as key resources in the planning and implementation of stigma prevention programs
Control Strategies for Reconfigurable PV Modules
No full textPV systems in urban environments frequently get shaded by nearby objects, which greatly reduces their yield. A potential solution for such situations is the use of reconfigurable PV modules. They are a type of modules which can reconfigure themselves under varying illumination conditions to ensure optimum yield at all times. The individual PV cells of the module are grouped into reconfigurable units/ cell blocks which can be interconnected in various ways to form a variety of unique configurations. The modules have an inbuilt algorithm which is responsible for controlling the reconfiguration process. There are various kinds of reconfiguration algorithms found in literature, each working with varying input parameters and operating principles. One such algorithm is the short circuit current sensing (SCCS) algorithm developed by the PVMD research group at TU Delft. The algorithm is meant for series-parallelconnected reconfigurable modules and uses each cell block’s short circuit current as input. It is a synchronous reconfiguration algorithm, which means it runs at regular time intervals and not when there is actually a change in the module’s irradiance conditions. Therefore, the aim of this thesis was to develop a robust reconfiguration algorithm with a shade detection mechanism. Consequently, numerous versions of a reconfiguration algorithm with shade detection mechanism were defined and tested using a simulation framework for modelling reconfigurable PV modules. It was observed that the reconfiguration algorithm that performed the best in terms of yield, reconfiguration count and accuracy was the one referred to as the ”CC4AP+IR algorithm”. The algorithm uses the module’s and a single cell block’s operating current and voltage as inputs for shade detection. It was observed that the algorithm reconfigured a fraction of the time that the SCCS algorithm reconfigured and had a DC yield comparable to the SCCS algorithm. The new algorithm was also tested using real-life data to validate its performance. This experiment indicated that if the module were to be run using the new reconfiguration algorithm instead of the SCCS algorithm, it would have run only 6% of the time that the SCCS algorithm ran, but have a comparable DC yield. The significantly lower reconfiguration count is relevant because in practice, the PV modules are connected to power converters which will not be able to tolerate the high fluctuations in output owing to frequent reconfigurations.Electrical Engineering | Sustainable Energy Technolog
An Ecological Understanding of Caregiver Experiences in Palliative Care
No full textPalliative care is specialized health care to improve quality of life for patients with serious illness and their families through prevention and relief of suffering. A Palliative Care Institute was held in western Washington to capture community voices about diverse needs, strengths, and opportunities for improvement of palliative care. Researchers employed qualitative methods to obtain thematic data, provide real-time analysis, and engage in a multivoting technique to reflect stakeholder interest in individual themes and prioritize larger group interests. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems framework was used to explore caregiver experiences. Within the microsystem, caregivers reported difficulties in interactions with medical providers as a key challenge. Within the mesosysytem, interactions between patients and medical providers and the impact on caregivers were explored. Within the exosystem, caregivers reported lack of control over the schedules of personal care staff. Macrosystem influences included impact of local culture on the development of palliative care services. Chronosystem influences include de-medicalization of childbirth and its impact on perceptions of palliative care. Implications include the need for social workers to be proactive in fostering trust and effective communication between care providers and caregivers, and the demand for health care provider training in communication with patients and families
