Watch Ground-breaking PBS
FRONTLINE Documentary “Facing Death”

Last month PBS aired an important FRONTLINE documentary “Facing Death” about end-of-life issues facing the medical staff, patients, and families at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center.

FRONTLINE gained extraordinary access to the hospital’s Intensive Care Units to lay bare the difficult decisions to be made as doctors and nurses struggle to guide families through the maze of end-of-life choices they confront: whether to remove breathing and feeding tubes; whether to continue drastic treatments with little hope for success; whether to opt for hospice care.

“What modern medicine is capable of doing is what 20 years ago was considered science fiction,” explains David Muller, M.D. dean of medical education at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “The decisions at the end of life have become much more complicated for everyone involved."

HealthCare Chaplaincy provided input to the online educational guide. The guide links to our website and identifies HealthCare Chaplaincy as an information resource and a multifaith organization that promotes the research, education and practice of spirit-centered palliative care.

You can find information about palliative care and about advance directives that allow you to document your wishes concerning medical treatments at the end of life here.

To view the FRONTLINE documentary, to explore its rich online resources and read comments, click here.

Read all about it!

The November issue of The Beacon bulletin is now online. Stories include:

• America’s first palliative care campus
• HealthCare Chaplaincy inaugurates 50th anniversary year
• New York State passes Palliative Care Information Act
• Landmark palliative care study in the New England Journal of Medicine
• More…

Read all about it here.

Meet Extraordinary Patient Care Honoree
Ralph Bernardini

Our annual Wholeness of Life Awards dinner on November 4th featured the patient care honorees from the metropolitan New York health care institutions where we manage, staff, and operate board certified chaplaincy services.

Each honoree is chosen by his or her peers as an exemplar of patient-centered care.

Each issue of HealthCare Chaplaincy Today is profiling one honoree.

Today meet Ralph Bernardini, RT, Senior Recreation Therapist 3, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. From the citation read at the award ceremony at the hospital, here’s what his colleagues say about him:

“Ralph, you embody the spirit, mission and values of the St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital. In your 29 years of service you have become well recognized as a kind, compassionate empathic person who is always available for patients and staff. You encourage those you work with to continue hoping, dreaming and reaching toward their goals. You have the skill, ability and faith to step into their lives and listen with your whole self to the unfolding of their pain, losses and hopes. You have mastered the incredible ability to meet patients where they are, accept them for who they are, and still encourage them to become something more than they could even imagine. You listen, respect and inspire them. And in return, they open up and let you into their lives as a partner on the journey to pursuing their goals. You have demonstrated sensitivity to the spirit of wholeness of life. We applaud your consistent, skillful, unselfish and passionate service to your family, patients and staff.”

Follow us on for the latest news about HealthCare Chaplaincy and the growing field of spirit-centered palliative care.