Custom Presentations & Workshops

We customize our presentations according to your audience, setting and topics of interest. Examples of these are below:

• Target audiences:
- Hospital staff: physicians, nurses, social workers, child life specialists, therapists, chaplains, and volunteers
- Hospice/palliative care staff and volunteers
- Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals in pediatric offices and clinics
- OB/pediatric interns and residents
- College/professional students: medicine, nursing, social work, theology, psychology, etc.
- Teachers/staff/counselors at elementary, middle and high schools and the parents of children attending these schools
- Faith/church groups
- Bereavement/grief support groups
- Community groups
- Family/friends/neighbors

• Settings:
- Hospital grand rounds
- Medical student-resident training programs
- Continuing education programs/in-service
- Classrooms—college/professional students
- Conferences/seminars/workshops/symposiums
- Panel discussions
- Gathering of community, civic or church groups

• Topics:
- Advocacy for and empowering the pediatric patient/family
- A family’s narrative on having a child die
- Bereavement/grief after a child has died
- Caring for the caregiver
- Caring for dying children and their families at home/hospital/hospice
- Care planning and goal setting for dying children
- Community resources for the dying child and family
- Creating coalitions for children’s end-of-life care
- Family and patient-centered pediatric end-of-life care
- Giving the dying child a voice in healthcare decision-making
- Considerations for working with dying adolescents
- Legacy activities for a dying child and their family
- Lessons learned from families with dying children
- Spiritual lessons learned from dying children
- Stories of inspiration and hope at the end of life
- Suggested improvements for pediatric end-of-life care
- Supporting early life losses due to miscarriage, stillbirth and infant death
- Prenatal diagnosis and perinatal hospice
- Conducting a staff/family needs assessment to assist in program development
- Development of a memorial service for faith communities to honor the lives of deceased children

• We have particular expertise in:
- Pediatric patient/family perspective
- Communication between dying children/families and the healthcare team
- Perinatal loss and infant death
- Study design, questionnaire development and analysis of qualitative/quantitative research (e.g., focus groups, 1-on-1 interviews, surveys)
- Brainstorming/ideation
- Development of new products/services
- Marketing/advertising

One or more family stories from our award-winning educational film, When a Child is Dying, can be integrated into our presentations.

Our personal experiences with illness, end-of-life care, death and grief profoundly affect our work:

• Beth:
- Struggled with infertility for six before she became pregnant with her fist child.
- Received a prenatal diagnosis of a congenital diaphragmatic hernia with her first child, Dylan. He lived for two weeks in the NICU on ECMO and died peacefully in her arms.
- Experienced a first trimester miscarriage eight months after Dylan died
- Has a healthy son, Tyler, born in 2001.

• Ann:
- Suffered a miscarriage and the physical and psychological impact made it difficult to conceive again naturally.
- Underwent two years of infertility treatments that resulted in the conception of one of her sons.
- Served as surrogate mom to her infant niece, Riley, who was born with an inoperable cancerous brain tumor that was undetected in utero in Ann's sister. Riley lived for two weeks in the NICU and at home.
- Acted as primary caregiver for her Mom, Mary, who was diagnosed at 59 with early-onset dementia. Ann supported her Mom and Dad during her Mom's nine-year decline with the disease and was with her Mom when she died in peace at age 68.
- Companioned her younger and only sister, Maureen, who was diagnosed with terminal stage IV colorectal cancer at 42. Maureen lived for 15 months and died surrounded by her loving family and having completed most of her "End-of-Life To Do List" with Ann's help.
- Has three healthy children, Conor, Kiernan, and Micheala

Please see a list of our past and future presentations.

Please contact us to discuss how we can create an educational program to address your specific objectives.

Beth Seyda, Co-Founder and Executive Director
919-969-9512
BethCompassion@aol.com

Ann Fitzsimons, Co-Founder and Assistant Director
248-592-9390
AnnCompassion@aol.com