Palliative Care Roundtable Forms

May 16, 2013

The AARC has just formed a new Roundtable for members interested in networking with their colleagues about palliative care.

Helen Sorenson, MA, RRT, FAARC, associate professor in the RT program at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, will be heading up the roundtable and says the new group is designed to start a dialogue among RTs about the palliative care process and increase their awareness of and comfort level with the concept.

 “Palliative care is something that respiratory therapists have been doing for a long time,” says Sorenson. “It is nothing more than trying to control the bothersome symptoms—pain, dyspnea, excess secretions, anxiety, depression, etc.—that our patients experience at the end-stage of their disease.” She invites everyone to join her in the new roundtable, where discussions will span all age groups, all diseases, and all health care settings, chronic to acute.

“Other health care professionals do not always understand our role in palliative care—ometimes we don’t understand it ourselves,” says the educator. By networking via the roundtable, members can learn from one another about the best strategies to use when delivering palliative care as a part of the interdisciplinary team.  

All of the AARC’s Roundtables are housed on the Association’s social media site, AARConnect, and are open to all members at no extra cost. To join the new Palliative Care Roundtable:

• Visit the Palliative Care Roundtable’s Community page
• Click on the green Join Community button.
• You’ll also be prompted to choose your email preference. You can get the Roundtable emails in Real Time, Daily Digest, or choose No Emails so that you can come to the site at your leisure and read what has been posted. (We suggest you choose Real Time in order to get the most benefit from the interactions on the site.)