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Balfour Mount Lecture

"Palliative Care as a Place of Healing"

Date: January 21, 2025

Speaker: Dr. Michael Kearney

Venue: RI Institute (MUHC)

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Learning Objectives:

1- Analyze the concept of healing and argue its central role in the palliative care mandate.

2- Apply strategies for fostering healing in patients and families through clinical practice in palliative care.

3- Integrate a comprehensive model of "deep resilience" and self-care 2.0 to ensure the sustainability and enjoyment of a long-term career in palliative care.

Michael Kearney, MD has over 40 years of experience in palliative care and has worked closely with two pioneers in the field, Dame Cicely Saunders and Professor Balfour Mount. He has published four books:听Mortally Wounded:听Stories of Soul Pain, Death, and Healing, A Place of Healing: Working with Nature and Soul at the End of Life,听The Nest in the Stream, and his most recent book,听Becoming Forest- A Story of Deep Belonging,听a fable of a young Irish woman who finds an antidote for her burnout and climate despair in the wisdom of trees, published by All Night Books. He was lead author on an article about burnout and resilience published in JAMA in 2009 entitled, 鈥淪elf-care of physicians working at the end-of-life.鈥� He teaches nationally and internationally.

Michael is now semi-retired, still working part-time in palliative care and offering mentoring and training in deep resilience through an initiative he founded, 鈥淭he Becoming Forest Project.鈥� He is married to psychologist, meditation teacher, and author Radhule Weininger PhD. Together they co-founded a non-profit, Mindful Heart Programs, which offers free, daily meditations. They teach and write together and share six adult children between them.

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Teresa Dellar Lecture

"What I've learned about accompaniment, death and bereavement: 29 years of psychological services at the heart of an MUHC care team (1986-2015)"

Date: February 19, 2025

Speaker: Johanne De Montigny

Venue: Teresa Dellar Palliative Care Residence

Learning Objectives:

1- Analyze the last words and the metaphors of the person who is at the end of life, so as to extract their essential meanings, while providing an understanding to loved ones, and thus facilitating the ultimate separation process.

2 - Determine that the death of a loved one is a significant, intimate, and unique event, and analyze its impact on those concerned, identifying the meanings they bring as part of their grieving process.

3 - Recognize that the 鈥渘on-return鈥� and 鈥渘ever again鈥� of death puts it in marked contrast to other losses that humans may experience, and demonstrate the key role of the caregiving team in supporting the grieving process from its earliest stages.

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Johanne de Montigny, M.A.Ps.

Clinical psychologist (1988-2015)

Retired member of the OPQ (2024)

PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND

After surviving a plane crash in which 17 people died (Quebec, 1979), Johanne de Montigny turned her attention to the future. She undertook studies in psychology and was the first clinical psychologist to work in a palliative care hospital unit in Canada. In collaboration with Dr. Balfour M. Mount of Montreal's Royal Victoria Hospital, she set up psychological services to accompany patients and support bereaved families. Using a humanistic approach, she worked for nearly thirty years in this interdisciplinary environment, where she trained and supervised more than twenty psychologists practicing in Quebec and France (1988-2015). At the same time, she supervised some fifteen psychologists in private practice until 2024.

Johanne de Montigny has collaborated with Quebec's health and social services network, giving training sessions to caregivers and volunteers involved in support, helping relationships and the psychology of bereavement and dying. She has trained more than 1,500 volunteers in the helping professions in a dozen Quebec cities.

Johanne de Montigny has helped organize numerous international conferences - for the 看片视频 University Health Centre - and provincial - for the Association qu茅b茅coise de soins palliatifs. In the 1990s, she took part in the first working group of the federal initiative to combat HIV/AIDS led by Dr. Bernard J. Lapointe, and co-authored the report 鈥淧utting an end to the isolation鈥� of people affected by HIV and AIDS.

A lecturer at the Universit茅 de Montr茅al, Johanne de Montigny gave teachings under the Certificat de g茅rontologie sur les approches palliatives (2009-2015) and, at the Universit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Montr茅al, at the Centre d'茅tudes sur la mort (1996-2006). She has given a series of multidisciplinary training courses on attachment, separation and bereavement at the H么pital de Beauvais in France (2007-2009). She has given hundreds of lectures on the dying process, bereavement, survival, the meaning of suffering and resilience. A consultant to the management of Le repos Saint-Fran莽ois d'Assise cemetery in Montreal, she has instituted monthly evening meetings on bereavement, as well as an annual symposium designed for people who have lost a loved one.

She has published four books and numerous texts on end-of-life and bereavement for the general public and healthcare professionals alike. Johanne de Montigny's honours include the Professional Award from the Ordre des psychologues du Qu茅bec (2018), the Recognition Award from the Association qu茅b茅coise de soins palliatifs (2019) and the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2025).

The Sheila Kussner Hope & Cope Lecture

"The Heart of the Matter: Personal reflections on caring and being cared for"

Date: March 26, 2025

Speaker: Jim Mulcahy

Venue: Jewish General Hospital

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Learning Objectives

1 -听Understand the complex interplay of grief and anticipatory grief experienced by patients and caregivers affected by serious illness.

2 - Analyze the impact of strong healthcare provider-patient relationships on the quality of palliative care and patient experience.

3 - Evaluate the connection between the ability to provide compassionate care in challenging circumstances, healthcare professionalism, and health system sustainability.

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Born, raised, and educated in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Mr. Mulcahy and his partner Sarah Kapp spent the first few years of their marriage in a small outport on the West Coast of Newfoundland where Jim taught high school English, and Sarah was a lab tech in a nearby satellite hospital. A few years later, they moved back to Nova Scotia to the university town of Antigonish where Sarah continued her lab work at St. Martha鈥檚 Regional Hospital and Jim began what would turn out to be a thirty-year career teaching junior and senior high English and drama.

In his early fifties Jim was diagnosed with his first cancer. A little over a year later Sarah was diagnosed with Huntington鈥檚 disease. In subsequent years three of their four children were diagnosed with the same incurable illness. Shortly after these diagnoses, Jim was diagnosed with a second cancer which resulted in an autologous stem cell transplant operation, and his reluctant resignation from his teaching career.

Over the next dozen or so years, Jim was the primary caregiver for Sarah throughout her slow deterioration and death, one month shy of their 47th anniversary. A number of years later, a subsequent and personally restorative long distance relationship ended when Jim鈥檚 new partner died suddenly from an aggressive case of glioblastoma. Months after her death, Jim was diagnosed with his third cancer for which he is now in active treatment.

As a result of the various illnesses which have haunted and will continue to haunt his family, Jim has become heavily involved in issues relating to cancer and hospice/palliative care as a family/patient advocate. He has served on a wide variety of committees at the local, provincial, and national levels focused on enhancing quality hospice/palliative care and continues to personally volunteer in the Palliative Care and Chemo Clinic Units at St. Martha鈥檚 Hospital. He has also been the keynote speaker at multiple hospice/palliative care conferences across Canada, experiences he has always found to be personally rejuvenating and inspirational. In his opinion, quality hospice/palliative care provides an exemplary model of civility and compassion in an increasingly fractious world.

Date: September 25, 2025

Speaker: Harvey Chochinov

Programme details tbc听