PORT TOWNSEND — The eighth annual Hospice Foundation for Jefferson Healthcare breakfast event will feature an address by a palliative care physician along with a personal recollection by a local resident whose family benefited from hospice services.
The breakfast is scheduled for 8 a.m. Thursday in the Commons Building at Fort Worden State Park, 200 Battery Way.
Tickets for the breakfast are $25 each, with participants encouraged to contribute any additional amount to support the foundation’s programs.
While limited seating will be available at the door, participants are encouraged to purchase tickets online at www.hospicefoundationjhc.or
At 8 a.m., there will be socialization, coffee, check-in and seating. Some seats will be available for purchase at this time. Guests should be seated at 8:30 a.m. for the one-hour program, according to organizers.
“The annual breakfast is not only our primary fundraiser but a way for us to share our mission with the community,” said foundation President Tom Duke.
“We are particularly excited about this year’s program as it includes Dr. Melissa Bender who has been at the forefront of hospice and palliative-related research and treatment in Washington state.”
Bender, from the University of Washington Palliative Care Department, is board-certified in hospice and palliative medicine in addition to family medicine and serves as both an attending physician and a professor at the Seattle school.
Palliative medicine is multi-disciplinary care to improve the quality of life of patients who are diagnosed with a potential life-threatening disease.
It is an approach that addresses the concerns, symptoms and side effects of the treatment and disease of the whole person, including psychological and social issues.
Bender has helped to develop the curriculum for medical students at UW on “how to have the conversation” and has been the co-director of the palliative care track for the UW students since 2012.
After her presentation, Bender will hold a training session at Jefferson Healthcare hospital, instructing staff about palliative techniques.
The program also includes a discussion of hospice services from Port Ludlow resident Brian Belmont, whose late wife, Patty, was both a hospice volunteer and, at the end of her life, a hospice patient.
Last year’s breakfast raised more than $20,000 and supported patient and family care, bereavement and grief support for local recipients.
For more information, call 360-385-2019.
