Palliative and End of Life Care

I Am Living receives Good Samaritan Mission Award

The I Am Living public awareness initiative and campaign delivered by Calvary Health Care, Catholic Cemeteries + Crematoria and Mercy Palliative Care, has been named the Good Samaritan Mission Award winner at the Catholic Health Australia National Conference 2023. The program launched in 2022, is designed to expand understanding, and

Dr Rachel Hughes, Prof Peter Ravenscroft, Dr Pam Harrison OAM and Mark Jeffrey at Calvary Mater Newcastle's celebration of 40 years providing palliative care services.
Celebrating 40 years of palliative care

Calvary Mater Newcastle’s Palliative Care Service has marked a significant milestone this month, celebrating 40 years of caring for patients from the Hunter, Lower Mid North Coast and New England regions. As the largest specialist palliative care provider in the region Mark Jeffrey, General Manager at Calvary Mater Newcastle, commended

Kerry Geale: My Palliative Care Story

Kerry Geale knows a thing or two about life and death. The former Wagga Wagga Citizen of the Year, parks and recreation manager, city councilor, nurseryman, gardening talkback host, and men’s health advocate also knows “a darn sight more” than he used to about palliative care. Diagnosed with prostate cancer

Calvary Kogarah patients and families benefit from palliative care refurbishments

Patients, families and carers are benefiting from a $1.79m refurbishment to palliative care facilities at Calvary Health Care Kogarah, a specialist palliative care and rehabilitation hospital within the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District and servicing St George and Sutherland Shire. This project was in part supported by a $305,000

National COVID-19 Bereavement Project

Would you like to help improve access to bereavement support during COVID-19? As businesses and cities open up again, we are being told that life is getting back to ‘normal’, but for people who have experienced a death during COVID-19, there is no back to normal. Calvary and researchers at

Report calls for more home-based palliative care

A new report commissioned by Catholic Health Australia (CHA) calls for the provision of more home-based palliative care services to relieve pressure on hospitals and save valuable health system dollars. CHA, the peak body for Catholic health and aged care service providers in Australia, launched the report today at Calvary

Community Palliative Care Forum

A very successful Community Palliative Care Forum was hosted in Wagga on Monday evening by Calvary Riverina Hospital’s Palliative Care Enhancement Council in collaboration with Calvary Riverina Hospital, the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, Forrest Centre Hospice and Murrumbidgee Primary Health Network. The purpose of this forum was to start the

Marriage, Same Sex Relationships and Calvary

With a sense of unease and discomfort, Calvary noted several media articles over the weekend of 19 and 20 August 2017 which claim that the “Catholic church” is threatening to fire teachers, nurses and other employees who marry their same-sex partner if gay marriage is legalised. We reassure staff and

dying to know day
Dying to Know Day – 8 August 2016

  Dying to Know Day  is an annual day that focuses on increasing awareness and talking about death and dying.   At some stage, everyone is likely to come into contact with people who have, a serious advancing illness and are approaching the end of their life or dying. If you find it

Launch of Death, Dying and Palliative Care DVD

One of the patients, Virginia de Groot, generously shares with the students her challenging experience of having a terminal illness and talking about it with her family, which for many of the students was a very moving and emotional experience.

Dealing with death and dying
Dealing with death

David Bowie triggers a conversation about the meaning of life and dealing with death David Bowie’s death has stimulated many conversations about how we prepare for death, psychologically and spiritually. Not all people in palliative care are elderly, and the desire to seek spiritual meaning often comes to the fore

Mary Ringstad
Chance Encounters

“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives; the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects, like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swivelled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.” Bryce Courtenay Call it coincidence, destiny or fate but just