Pre-Conference Workshop
Friday, August 23, 8:30am – 4:30pm

Fee: $145 ($195, after Aug 1)

Playing with the Paradigm: Leading From the Unknown
Camille Adair & Robert Bern

In this day-long, activity-based workshop, we will engage in self-exploration, a first step in inclusive leadership. We will move from the notion of leadership in isolation to a relational experience with oneself and others. We are going to use play drawing from a diverse range of sources, (such as Fairy Tales, and Argentine tango), focusing on empathy, authenticity, and consent. No dance experience necessary!

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of this workshop, participants should be able to:

• Employ curiosity as a means for working with indignation.
• Practice relational exercises to strengthen inclusive leadership.
• Discuss the value of vulnerability in the face of paradox and the unknown.
• Discover the value of play in self-discovery.

Breakout Sessions
Saturday Afternoon – August 24

Participants will be able to attend a maximum of three sessions. (Pre-selection will begin 6-8 weeks before conference.)

Session A
Direct Pay Primary/Urgent Care: One Model for Practicing ‘Good’ Medicine
Sam Slishman

Direct Primary Care comes in many flavors. I’ve been offering essentially direct primary urgent care since 2015 under the business name “Pre-R,” and it’s been a fun ride. It’s helped me meet my neighbors, and I now have much more understanding for the struggles patients experience out in the wild. If you’d like to have a little more autonomy in your practice, if you’d like to leave the office or ER to see people in their homes, if you’d like to be paid periodically with Home Depot gift cards, then come with your questions and I’ll help you decide whether “DPC” is right for you.

Session B
Healthcare Portraits: Drawings and Stories of Experience with Illness
Robert Bern

All of us have healthcare stories that define who we are; whether patient, family member, professional, or all of the above.  During this session I will present drawings and stories from my series Healthcare Portraits, offering an artist’s perspective on how we can become powerful authors of our own experience, and how this creative process gives voice to the subtle humanity we long for in our fast-paced healthcare environments. You will also have the opportunity to reflect and engage in the creation of your own portrait.

Session C
Doctors and Nurses Talk to Each Other About Practice
Marie Manthey

This will be a condensed version of the 3-hour ‘Nursing Salons’ Marie has held in her home for more than a decade. Consistently over the past 10+ years, participants have responded positively about their experiences, i.e. getting in touch with deep-down values and restoring hope. There is no specific agenda. Expect an organic and unscripted conversation centered on one question the group chooses at the beginning that they will focus on. Marie offers, “…that information shared at [salons] has been brought into the lives of the participants in substantial and profound ways.” All conference attendees are welcome.  The only requirement is a desire—and willingness—to enter the conversation. (For more information about Salons, read “What is a nursing salon?”)

Session D
Fierce Compassion as a Force for Change
Tami Berry

Change is hard. And when change is thrust upon us as clinicians, it’s even harder. With so much change occurring in medicine and healthcare today, it’s never been more important for us to learn and practice fierce compassion. Compassion moves beyond empathy because it comprises three fundamental criteria: 1) kindness toward the one who suffers, 2) a mindfulness-based mindset that rests in open, non-judgmental awareness, and 3) a recognition that suffering is a signpost of our own humanity–a powerful reminder that we are not alone. In this workshop we will explore compassion from a rich history of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and as a skill that can be learned through meditation. Furthermore, we will review the science behind compassion-based practices to appreciate the physiology of compassion that supports health and wellbeing. This workshop will be philosophical, analytical, and experiential. When we bring the gift of compassion to ourselves, we are then free to more effortlessly meet change and help relieve the suffering of others skillfully.

Session E
Financial Independence & Wellbeing: What We Wished We Learned Before Med School
Scott Bisheff

Why personal finance? Financial freedom is freedom to practice medicine on your terms. We will discuss financial basics for health care professionals, not routinely taught in medical school or residency, using simple (but not always easy) principles.  Let’s talk continuing financial education: achieving financial literacy, choosing a financial advisor, selecting insurance, understanding your greatest tax break, and more. We’ll briefly review basic financial principles, then engage in an interactive question and sharing session.

Session F
Medicine & Nursing: A Long Overdue Conversation
Camille Adair & Bill Norcross

There is a fundamental lack of understanding between physicians and nurses about their respective professions. This lack of understanding prevents us—a combined 4.5 million strong—from realizing our full potential, together as collaborators, and leaders for change, and clinician advocacy. This meaningful conversation, led by a physician, and a nurse will launch the Osler-Nightingale talks; an interdisciplinary, grassroots effort for positive change we are all desperately looking for.
In 2019 we are acknowledging the centenary of Sir William Osler’s death. In 2020 we will celebrate the bicentenary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. Let’s honor them both by exploring together three systemic-relational principles applied to medicine and nursing as a way of navigating the gap: Belonging, Order, and Acknowledgment. We are two distinct tribes with common challenges and common goals. As healers, let’s turn the helping lens inward to ourselves, and our colleagues, in order that we may gain wisdom and understanding as we navigate moral distress and the resulting burnout that impacts the majority of us caring for patients today.

Session G
Lifestyle & Pathways to Meaning: Where Being and Meaning Converge
Maggie Grueskin

Beyond the healthcare crisis in America, there is also an emerging Lifestyle crisis.  The way we eat, breathe, move, sleep, work, and relate to others are all being thrown off their natural rhythms, both inside our bodies and in the way we craft a life. Sir William Osler suggested: “Use your five senses.  Learn to see, learn to hear, learn to feel, learn to smell, and know that by practice alone you can become expert.”  We will assess mind/body constitution and offer new insights into ‘who you are’ as an energetic being. We’ll analyze whether your current lifestyle supports your nature, or if it serves as a source of chronic stress and dis-ease.  If you’re operating on the ‘wired and tired’ current in life, it’s time to turn your focus from an externally-oriented and reactive way of being, to one that’s connected to the grounded-center of your authentic being.  Viktor Frankl, Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and founder of Logotherapy, said that to be fully human is to be a conscious and response-able being, cognizant of our ability to choose our way through life.  But how do you decide?  To align your unique nature with your duties in life (dharma) is something that most of us don’t do, but which can result in either hitting life’s mark, or missing our targets all together. We will review research from the growing movement of positive-psychology and review three pathways to meaning, as found in Logotherapy.

Session H
Medical & Nursing Volunteerism: Serving Others, Healing Ourselves
Dana Justesen & Dan Lickness

For the person who has everything, what do you give to yourself and the rest of humanity ? We finally have obtained the successful career, the house, and the family, yet we feel an emptiness – that emptiness is service, the need to give back to humanity.  But you don’t know where to look to start to volunteer your time and talent? In this workshop we will explore that inner desire to give back, how to fulfill that need for service and your options for volunteering both locally and abroad. “Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received, and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.” ~ Mother Teresa

Session I
Letters to the Dead: “What happens to a dream deferred?”(Langston Hughes)
Reuben Last

Medicine involves loss… Personal, Professional, Patients, Aspirations, Situations, Time…
In the classroom where this unique writing workshop will be held, you will find a USPS Dead Letter Post Office (United Slumberland Postmordum Service). Join us there for discussion—and letter-writing—as we explore how we may cope in a world of loss.

USPS NOTICE: Dead Letter Post Offices ensure your letters to the dead are delivered in an expeditious and appropriate manner to their intended recipients. Write your letters on the papers provided and post or mail as you choose. Mailing will be done daily at midnight. The sentiments are sent to their final destinations at your discretion: We guarantee the Speed of a Tear, a Kiss, or a Human Heart Beat!
Our Postal boxes are private, sealed and secured forever. Air-post services via Celestial Skies Cremains; Ground via Evergreen Campus Mortuary; Underseas through Shoreside Whale Fall. (For those who choose to openly post, walls are available near the front counter.)