2nd Global Conference
The End of Life Experience
Dying, Death and Culture in the 21st Century

Saturday 13th April 2019 to Sunday 14th April 2019
Bruges, Belgium

Join us for a fast-paced, interdisciplinary fueled two days of learning, sharing and connection as we engage with one another, across disciplines, practices and professions to transform the end of life into a person-centered experience.

This inclusive interdisciplinary conference explores dying and death and the ways culture impacts care for the dying, the overall experience of dying, and how the dead are remembered. Culture not only presents and portrays ideas about “a good death” and norms that seek to achieve it, culture also operates as both a vehicle and medium through which meaning about death is communicated and understood. Sadly, too, culture sometimes facilitates death through violence.

Given the location of this year’s conference, a central theme in our proceedings (augmenting those listed below) will involve tracing on-going and profound shifts in contemporary attitudes toward death. Hospices or almshouses (in Dutch: Godshuizen) are charitable housing that were usually built for needy or elderly people. The initiative often came from crafts organisations or rich individuals ordered their establishment. In Bruges these houses already start to appear in the 14th century. Generally they consist of groups of small, soberly furnished houses that are gathered around an inner courtyard. The houses are usually not more than one story high. Luckily some 40 of those complexes still survive in Bruges today. Most of them still serve a social purpose (as housing for elderly, poor, disabled people,…). Our conference explores these connections, and those between contemporary technologies, social media hubs, and current health care delivery systems that impact current end-of-life issues and decisions, including the experience of bereavement and grief, and particularly how patients, staff, and survivors intersect amidst newly emerging care settings.

We welcome submissions that engage medical, therapeutic, cinematic, historical, ethnographic, ethical, literary, anthropological, philosophical, theological, political, artistic or performance oriented approaches to relationships between death, dying and culture, such as:

~ How might health care systems integrate empathic design principles across the entire spectrum of the end of life experience? ~ How might new technologies offer new propositions for models of care?
~ How might we implement best practices in high-quality, patient-centered care?
~ How do options such as Physician Aid in Dying (sometimes called Physician Assisted Dying) factor into contemporary dying trajectories, and how best might we consider the quality vs. quantity balance?
~ How might cultural, spiritual and traditional belief systems and practices more fully empower our relationship with mortality, both in personal and professional settings?
~ How are cultural attitudes toward death and dying currently depicted across various artistic and media platforms?

We welcome all those who struggle and strive to address questions such as these, and those that seek to analyze, re-imagine and/or improve the end of life experience. Augmenting our rich conversations, our ethos aspires to create essential partnerships that can drive local visions for patient-centered, high-quality care that can help transform the end of life experience in differing geographic environments. To that end, we invite collaboration with organizations and individuals ready to change the conversation about living and dying with a view to forming a publication to engender further collaboration and discussion.

Progressive Connexions also invites papers from caregivers, artists, therapists, theologians, thought leaders, stake holders, medical professionals, entrepreneurs, designers, patients, activists, journalists, policy makers, developers, technologists, and academics from across these and other disciplines that respond to or innovatively (re-)frame any of the following additional core conference themes listed below:

1: Health Care Systems: Patients, Staff, and Institutions

Modern Health Care Delivery Systems and Care for the Dying
Palliative Care
Hospice
Elder Care/Ageing in Place Models
Trauma and Emergency Care
Nursing Homes/Skilled Facilities/Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs)/Assisted Living
Clinical Competencies in Pain Management and Symptom Control
Measurements, Incentives, Regulatory Statutes, and Recommendations
Continuity of Care Across Treatment Settings
Interdisciplinary Care

2: The Caregiver-Patient Relationship

Caregiver’s (Physician’s?) Obligations and Virtues
Medical Paternalism and Respect for the Patient, Autonomy
Truth-Telling/Truth-Hearing
Informed Consent
Medicine in Multicultural Societies
Contested Therapies Within the Physician-Patient Relationship
Conflicts of Interest; Problems of Conscience
Caregiver Stress/Caregiver Burnout/Compassion Fatigue
Being With Someone Who Is Dying
Assessment Challenges/Barriers

3: End-of-Life Issues and Decisions

Defining Death
Organ Transplantation and Organ Donation
The Interplay of Ethical Meta-Principles at the End of Life
Nonmaleficence
Beneficence
Autonomy
Death Anxiety
Choosing Death
Advance Directives/Advance Planning/Physician Order for Life-Sustaining Treatments (POLST)/Do Not Resuscitate
Considering End-of-Life Issues and Decisions and Legislation

4: Relationships Between Death and Culture

Death and the internet
Death and social media
Death and music
Death in literature
Death in film
Death and broadcast media
Death and athletics
Death in comic books
Death and television
Death and radio
Death and print media
Death and popular art / architecture
Death and advertising
Death and consumerism

​Our conference is a dynamic convening of design, tech, health care, policy, media, the arts and activist communities committed to generating human-centered, interdisciplinary innovation for the end of life experience.

What to Send
The aim of this interdisciplinary conference and collaborative networking event is to bring people together and encourage creative conversations in the context of a variety of formats: papers, seminars, workshops, storytelling, performances, poster presentations, panels, q&a’s, roundtables etc.

300 word proposals, presentations, abstracts and other forms of contribution and participation should be submitted by Friday 9th November 2018. Other forms of participation should be discussed in advance with the Organising Chair.

All submissions will be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Development Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed.

You will be notified of the panel’s decision by Friday 23rd November 2018.

If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 1st March 2019.

Abstracts and proposals may be in Word, PDF, RTF or Notepad formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in the programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: End of Life 2 Submission

Where to Send
Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to the Organising Chair and the Project Administrator:

Dr Nate Hinerman: nphinerman@usfca.edu
Project Administrator: brugesendoflife@progressiveconnexions.net

What’s so Special About Progressive Connexions Events?
A fresh, friendly, dynamic format – at Progressive Connexions we are dedicated to breaking away from the stuffy, old-fashion conference formats, where endless presentations are read aloud off PowerPoints. We work to bring you an interactive format, where exchange of experience and information is alternated with captivating workshops, engaging debates and round tables, time set aside for getting to know each other and for discussing common future projects and initiatives, all in a warm, relaxed, egalitarian atmosphere.

A chance to network with international professionals – the beauty of our interdisciplinary events is that they bring together professionals from all over the world and from various fields of activity, all joined together by a shared passion. Not only will the exchange of experience, knowledge and stories be extremely valuable in itself, but we seek to create lasting, ever-growing communities around our projects, which will become a valuable resource for those belonging to them.

A chance to be part of constructing change – There is only one thing we love as much as promoting knowledge: promoting real, lasting social change by encouraging our participants to take collective action, under whichever form is most suited to their needs and expertise (policy proposals, measuring instruments, research projects, educational materials, etc.) We will support all such actions in the aftermath of the event as well, providing a platform for further discussions, advice from the experts on our Project Advisory Team and various other tools and intellectual resources, as needed.

An opportunity to discuss things that matter to you – Our events are not only about discussing how things work in the respective field, but also about how people work in that field – what are the struggles, problems and solutions professionals have found in their line of work, what are the areas where better communication among specialists is needed and how the interdisciplinary approach can help bridge those gaps and help provide answers to questions from specific areas of activity.

An unforgettable experience – When participating in a Progressive Connexions event, there is a good chance you will make some long-time friends. Our group sizes are intimate, our venues are comfortable and relaxing and our event locations are suited to the history and culture of the event.

Ethos
Progressive Connexions believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract or proposal for presentation.

Please note: Progressive Connexions is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence, nor can we offer discounts off published rates and fees.

Please send all enquiries to: brugesendoflife@progressiveconnexions.net

For further details and information please visit the conference web page: http://www.progressiveconnexions.net/interdisciplinary-projects/health-and-illness/the-end-of-life-experience/conferences/

Sponsored by: Progressive Connexions