The Regence Foundation unveiled its signature philanthropic program today, Sojourns, to foster best practices, leadership and collaboration that help people with life-threatening and incurable illness to access quality palliative care in their own community. The Foundation also announced its first Sojourns grant to OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital for its Bridges pediatric palliative care program.
Palliative care is a holistic approach that treats the whole person, including management of pain and other discomfort at any stage of disease, while supporting caregivers and families. Depending on a patient's needs and goals for care, palliative care may be combined with or supplant curative therapies.
"Increasingly, research shows that patients' treatment desires and comfort are overlooked," said Michael Alexander, Regence Foundation board chair. "The Regence Foundation seeks to identify best practices in which treatment and care meet with patient and family desires, and to extend those practices to the community, whether they are suffering years with a life-threatening illness or facing a limited prognosis."
First grant for pediatric palliative care
The Regence Foundation awarded its first Sojourns Pathway grant to OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital Foundation in Portland in support of the hospital's Bridges pediatric palliative care program. The $52,000 grant will be used to survey pediatric palliative care training needs among community hospice nurses throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington and develop a pediatric hospice training curriculum and DVD.
"A very real challenge faced by hospice and palliative medicine professionals is that we feel ill-equipped to manage pediatric patients," said Deborah Jaques, Executive Director of the Oregon Hospice Association. "A primary reason is that we have fewer opportunities to gain skills, experience and information about this important patient group."