The Conversation Project co-founded by Pulitzer Prize winner Ellen Goodman in 2012, is a public engagement initiative of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a not-for-profit organization that is a leader in health and health care improvement worldwide. Their goal is both simple and transformative: to help everyone talk about their wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be….
Abundant Life Palliative Care is a hospital based palliative care organization that specialises in Organ Failure but due to need, have opened our arms to everyone needing our care.
We provide holistic care including medical, psychosocial and spiritual support for the patient living with a terminal disease.
Maryland Palliative Hospice Centre is an all women-led project which has its foundation in the Schoenstatt Youth. It is in this movement that they were formed and trained to be strong women and members of society. Utopia in Action – the registered name of the company – acquired the property to launch this project in Hanover Park, Cape Town to train and empower unemployed youth, establish a palliative and hospice centre, and a sustainable garden.
The Association of Palliative Care Centres (APCC), formerly known as the Hospice Palliative Care Association (HPCA) of South Africa, was founded in 1987 and is a registered Not-for-Profit Company (Reg. no. 1986/001887/08) in South Africa.
The APCC is an Association of accredited palliative care service providers, many of whom are known as hospices. All APCC members are accredited against the Standards for Palliative Healthcare Services that have been approved by the Council for Health Service Accreditation of South Africa (COHSASA) and the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua).
How to Die Podcast is hosted and produced by Sean O’Connor. He is a mid-life and death coach, end-of-life companion, and soul carer. Sean also enjoys working as a writer, interactive performer, and producer of theatre in working communities.
Nechama: Comforting the Bereaved
‘Spiritual care within palliative care: Perspectives from soul carers in South Africa’ – “The purpose of this small-scale study was to elicit information from a group of people providing spiritual care to people at the end of life (designated Soul Carers) as to how they understood their role and practice in the field, as well as to ‘map’ the extent of the work being done in different areas. Its intention is to make visible what is often invisible in the end-of-life communities of practice.”
Paper by Mary Ryan, Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams, Carol Scrooby and Rafaela Peerutin for the Palliative Care Conference in Cape Town, April 2023.
‘To allay fears of death we need to bring it back to life’ – The over-medicalisation of death has pushed it to the back of minds. This needs to change, say experts.
An article by Claire Keeton, Senior features writer for the Sunday Times.
Crossing the Creek: A Practical Guide to Understanding the Dying Process is a book for the dying, caregivers, clinicians, family members and friends.
Sean O’Connor talks about the Report of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death, recently featured in the Daily Maverick. The article encourages the fact that we clearly have much to talk about – Death is part of life, not something that happens at the end of it.
Sean O’Connor is a writer, performer, memorial service celebrant and end-of-life carer. He hosts the ‘How To Die’ podcast at www.howtodie.co.za,
‘Embracing bold new perspectives in preparing for a sacred death’ – An old friend who is dying feels the journey should be filled with reverence and awe.
An article by Bridget Hilton-Barber for Daily Maverick
‘Can you design your own death?’ – We’re all going to die. Yes, you too — and this very moment is not soon to start accepting it
An article by Sean O’Connor for Sunday Times