Like all service groups, hospices have professional organizations for education and professional growth. In Ontario, we have two, the Ontario Hospice Palliative Care Association (O.H.P.C.A.) and the Hospice Association of Ontario (H.A.O.).

The former has a larger umbrella where one can find a broad spectrum of health care professionals and volunteers including academics, doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, researchers, Community Care Access Centre case managers, agency staff including hospices and volunteers. H.A.O. is a smaller association that includes mainly hospice staff and volunteers. Until this year, each has held its own conference.

In April, both came together in a single conference, One Vision, One Voice featuring outstanding speakers, panelists, workshops and exhibits. Over 500 people attended able to choose from 75 workshops over three days.

When I saw the topic of the opening speaker, I was a little dubious. Dr. Jose Luis Pereira spoke eloquently about "The Hospice Palliative Care Community's Response To Physician Assisted Suicide".

See what I mean? This could be a real turn off. What I did not know is that some countries and even some U.S. states consider this an option in cases where a patient is living with prolonged and unrelenting pain, and that there is an on-going lively debate on the subject.

Dr. Pereira acknowledged that there are legitimate arguments that support a patient's right to make this choice, however, he reasoned that there are currently enough options including improving effective pain control, "Do not resuscitate" orders and palliative sedation and induced coma in extreme cases.

His research and experience-based position was debated the next morning by an expert panel moderated by CBC's Hana Gartner who kept the discussion focused and lively.

The thought I came away with was that this is a really "hot button" issue that could get the public engaged in end-of-life issues that might result in governments responding with more adequate funding for end of life and hospice services in the community.

A perfect segue into my first workshop was Chris Sherwood's definition of life... "a sexually transmitted disease ending in death."

Sherwood is a nurse and president of the O.H.P.C.A. who provoked our thinking in presenting "A model For Hospice Palliative Care: Thinking Outside The Box."

Although his definition is a massive oversimplification, the essence is hard to deny and it grabbed us.

Next he engaged me by suggesting that we need to examine whether our practice is designed for service providers rather than clients; that we spend too much time trying to define who is palliative, putting emphasis on patient, place or program.

Sherwood maintains there is no palliative patient, only palliative care. This was a great help to me as I have great difficulty with definitions imposed by funding agencies. For example, someone is palliative "if we can reasonably expect that they will die in the next 12 months." Really! Is this at all defensible? What about all that a patient experiences after diagnosis? Should we not focus all our efforts on care for the duration cultivating hope and offering coping, caring tools allowing quality of life for whatever time we have?

At lunch, there was an inspiring slide show set to Tim McGraw's great song, Live Like You Were Dying".

Deborah Lavender, executive director of H.A.O. reflected on the Essence of Hospice. It is always reassuring for a volunteer to hear those in leadership acknowledge that volunteers drive this movement. Lavender favours an accessible continuum of care in which community resources and home-based services receive the same emphasis as institutional care and that quality is consistent wherever one lives in Ontario.

"Boomers as Volunteers" was also helpful as this is the group from which we are beginning to draw our new volunteers.

Donna Lockhart shared some of the stereotypes of the "Boomer" and warned that hospices will have to be really flexible to win and keep this group. She says they are different from the committed for life, "I will do anything" volunteer we may have now. Boomer volunteers will be more "episodic" because of other important elements in their lives.

She asked us if we were ready to really share the good stuff that perhaps staff get to do now? Will we be genuine care partners with these volunteers? Will we find alternative ways for volunteers to complete the 30 hours of training required?

She also demonstrated how using community statistics available from Statistics Canada can help us in recruitment and retention of volunteers.

Although it was helpful to focus for a while on the challenges of attracting and retaining volunteers, and beneficial to share ideas in her action planning exercise, she made me feel pretty good about volunteer policies and practices at Matthews House. This is the kind of volunteer I am now and I believe Matthews House staff does involve our volunteers in challenging ways, by allowing them to use the skills and talents they developed in the responsible positions many either now hold or have held and by making training much more accessible.

Being volunteer focused is a core value of the original hospice ideal, a touchstone to constantly revisit.

One of Matthews House priorities for this next year is to initiate support services and programs for children and youth. To this end, I chose to attend "Supporting Children and Teens When A Parent Is Dying" given by two dynamos, Andrea Warnick and Ceilidh Eaton Russell from the iconic Mt. Sinai Hospital's youth program. Their workshop was incredibly helpful describing practical timely topics to include in such a program.

Sadly, they maintain that there are an amazing number of kids in the G.T.A. with no resources and no support in just this circumstance. They also said that avoidance is consciously practiced by too many professionals where children are involved. When the time comes, we know where to go for help.

My last workshop was much more mundane, practical and essential. "Fundraising Strategies" by Calvin Little, from Hospice Windsor. This is a topic for another column as hospice programs are so woefully under funded by the government. I'd like to share just one or two thoughts that resonated. He stressed the following about achieving community support: "Donors don't give to institutions. They invest in ideas and people in whom they believe" and "In good times and in bad, we know that people give because you meet needs, not because you have needs".

This represents a very small fraction of what went on during these three incredible days. Also of note, Matthews House received the highest level of accreditation currently available from H.A.O. and Matthews House volunteer, Bernice Posesorski was inducted into the June Callwood Circle Of Outstanding Volunteers.

I can't wait for next year's conference.