About

Our project has 2 parts:

Part I - Education and Immersion.

6 x weekly x 90 minute sessions at Gibson Unit, Calvary St John's Palliative Care and Oncology Unit.

Each session has an education component, activity with Calvary staff and/or patients and a reflective de-brief. Starts February 18th.

Part II - Creative Response.

All participants, including adults will be asked to create a personal response to their experiences in Part I. It could be a piece of visual art, music, poem. Whatever takes their fancy!

The short term aim of this exciting pilot project is to educate and journey with Senior students from a class at St Mary’s College and Guilford Young College about Palliative and End of Life Care in the hospital setting.

The long term aim is to enhance our communites capacity to deal with death and dying in a more positive way and in so doing be able to support others who approaching and reaching the end of life. We also hope that the program will enhance the participants capacicity to personally live more "fully human, fully alive" lives.

Calvary staff, doctors, community members and organisations will be sharing their expertise about end of life care issues as well as their own stories and experiences with the participants.

At the conclusion of the 6 weeks, students and staff will respond by creating a personal response to their experiences. These responses will be shared with both the community of St Mary’s and Guildford Young College, the community of Calvary and the wider community. Response(s) could take the form of music, poetry, presentation, film, visual art.

Calvary plans to document and research the program. We also want to create our own response in the form of a short film (7-10 minutes) which will be shared at the conclusion of the course and be used as an education tool about Calvary and how we provide dignified pallitiave and end of life care for people as they are approaching and reaching the end of their life. Our vision is holistice health care which places people and their goals of care at the centre of their web of care.

The project is being funded by Calvary Hobart and Palliative Care Tasmania. The effectivenesss of the program will be evaluated as part of an approved Calvary Hobart research project.

At Calvary Hobart our vision as a Catholic not-for-profit hospital is to excel and be recognised as a continuing source of healing, hope and nurturing to the people and communities we serve. We believe that this project will help us live this vision in a creative and new way. Our values of hospitality, healing, stewardship and respect are the inspiration and foundation of this project.



18 May 2016

Student Responses

How rewarding it was to read and view the very meaningful and thoughtful responses I have received from you so far. It is so affirming for Calvary that you have obviously learnt and grown from our program. Some comments and snippets from the responses are below. Please feel free to email or post other comments and responses or share your work.
THANKS EVERYONE


"Before I went to Calvary Hospital, I was so scared to talk about death with my family members or just my friends. I have learnt that it is OK to talk about death because everyones time will eventually come.The picture of the tree, especially at the bottom shows how uncomfortbale  I was going to Calvary because I thought that everything was going to be depressing. As the time went by, my tree began to untangle itself with guidance from the teachers and the staff at Calvary. I felt free and comfortable to talk about death. I have learnt so many things that I didn't know about and that is what the leaves on my tree represent. My tree is flourishing in this knowledge. Thank you for a great experience."  Innocent Michael

"This course has definitly helped me prepare myself for an eventual death that I know is coming"
Lucy Bauermeister

"To me death, dying and palliative care can't be anything but personal. ..For me I experienced this recently with my dad and it was very full on. We never really got a break from the medical environment because we had to surround ourselves around it, hospital life became our home life not only for my dad but for the whole family. I feel that this course outlined death, dying and palliative care in the best way you could when it comes to explaining this topic"  Brianna Pirere

"No-one knows what it is like to die, but what we do know is that there is a way that you can change your mind set about end of life... We can choose to accept death and see it as something beautiful or we can remain scared of death and wanting to avoid it"
Emily Vince

 "Watching the patients at St John's really inspired me to write this, along with the health care team that assisted throughout the ward. Seeing Virginia and what she had to go through, was also an inspiring experience. She was a positive person who didnt mind at all being treated, because she knew she was in the right place. She also inspired me." Madison Car

The piece I have drawn and written shows how talking about death/dying does not have to be a "hush/hush" topic. That it is OK to talk about it. There is no need to feel awkward or scared about bringing up the conversation. People need to be educated and have a better understanding of Palliative Care. The conversation needs to happen, no matter how hard it is. The more knowledge people have the easier it will be on the individual and families" Nadia Dandolo.



















- painting by Lauren Baker
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