Engage with Grace -- Reprise

Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented "blog rally" to promote Engage With Grace -- a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes.

It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations -- our closest friends and family.

Our original mission -- to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes -- hasn't changed. But it's been quite a year -- so we thought this holiday, we'd try something different.

A bit of levity.

At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We've included them at the end of this post. They're not easy questions, but they are important.
To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we'd start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:

Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this -- just five questions in plain, simple language -- can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion.
So with that, we've included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.

Over the past year there's been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we've been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.

One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife's preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.

Wishing you and yours a holiday that's fulfilling in all the right ways.

(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )

Check Out the MITSS White Paper on Clinician Support

We were very excited last week at our annual event to announce the release of "Disclosure and Apology ... What's Missing? Advancing Programs that Support Clinicians, " a comprehensive report highlighting current clinician support models in practice, and including a discussion of the legal barriers to support and how to overcome them as well as recommendations for future best practices. This report was formulated from a Clinician Support Forum that MITSS held last March that was sponsored by CRICO/RMF, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and Promutual Group.

Click here to download this important report.

And the Winners Are...

There was an unusual twist to the 2009 MITSS HOPE Award -- voting by an independent Selection Committee resulted in a tie! This year's winners were announced on Thursday, November 12th, at the MITSS 8th Annual Dinner and Fundraiser held at the Boston Marriott Copley Place.

This year's sponsor, rL Solutions' CEO and President, Sanjay Malaviya, presented the prestigious award to Patty Skolnik of Colorado Citizens for Accountability (CCA); and Sue Scott, Myra McCoig, and Laura Hirschinger of the forYOU Team from the University of Missouri Health System.

Ms. Skolnik was rewarded for her work in founding CCA after the tragic death of her son, Michael. CCA is a grassroots patient safety organization that has provided support and resources to thousands of individuals and families nationwide since 2005.

Ms. Scott, Ms. McCoig, and Ms. Hirschinger were recognized for their important work with the forYOU Team, a comprehensive approach for providing emotional peer support to clinicians, beginning immediately after critical events. Look for more information about these amazing winners and their programs in the Winter edition of the MITSS Newsletter coming in December.

It was a record year for submissions -- the depth and breadth of the work being done around the country that is aligned with our mission of Supporting Healing and Restoring Hope is astounding. We would not only like to congratulate our winners on their most deserving award, but we would like to honor everyone who submitted an entry. Keep up the important work!

You May Have Noticed...

...that this space has a bit more quiet than usual. That's because things have been quite busy of late. It's that time of year again -- fundraising season!

We hope that you will be able to join us next Thursday, November 12th, 2009, at the Boston Marriottt Copley Place for our Eighth Annual Dinner and Fundraiser. Cocktails and raffles begin at 5:30 pm, and the program starts promptly at 7 pm. It promises to be an extraordinary evening, and we hope that you will be there to celebrate and support MITSS!

If you cannot attend, but you would still like to help out, visit our online auction. Click here to view and bid on some terrific items. Start your holiday shopping now, but don't delay -- the online auction closes on Monday, November 9th!

The MITSS Online Auction is now open

LET THE BIDDING BEGIN! The MITSS 2009 Online Auction is now open. Don't be outbid -- win some terrific prizes, all for a great cause!!!


Click here to start your bidding. All the funds raised will assist MITSS to continue doing our work of "Supporting Healing. Restoring Hope." to patients, families and clinicians following adverse medical events.