UM-HM Paediatric Palliative Care Symposium

Liese Groot

Liese Groot-Alberts is a Grief Therapist and a globally sought-after speaker. She has over 40 years of experience in developing and conducting education and training sessions related to palliative care, grief and bereavement, resilience, spirituality, bridging cultural differences and care for the healthcare professional. Her vast experience in this field is reflected by her extensive supervisory roles for medical, clinical and allied staff working in palliative care and bereavement. She is currently a member of the New Zealand Association of Counsellors, the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network and the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care.

Jenny Busch

Rev. Jenny Busch is an ordained Deacon of the Uniting Church in Australia, with over 30 years’ experience with a particular focus on children, youth and families. For the past six years, she has been serving as Chaplain at the Queensland Children’s Hospital and the Mater Brisbane Southside Hospitals (including Mater Mothers Hospital), with a significant involvement in multi-disciplinary teams in paediatric palliative care. She has provided a variety of professional development on understanding spiritual aspects of holistic paediatric palliative care.

Brian S.Carter

Brian Carter is an academician and clinician trained in paediatrics, neonatal- perinatal medicine, bioethics and palliative care with over 30 years of experience. He is currently a consultant neonatologist at the Children’s Mercy Hospital and Clinics and a Professor of Paediatrics at the University Missouri- Kansas City, School of Medicine, Kansas City where he is also Chairman and Endowed Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics. He is the Interim- Director at the Children’s Mercy Bioethics Centre. Dr Carter’s work and research has led to numerous publications in high-ranked journals and book chapters. He is the co-author and editor for the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th editions of Merenstein & Gardner’s Handbook of Neonatal Intensive Care, the first textbook on pediatric palliative care, Palliative Care for Infants, Children & Adolescents, and the first text on perinatal palliative care, Handbook of Perinatal-Neonatal Palliative Care. In 2003 he was awarded the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization’s Research Award, and in 2008 he received the William A. Silverman Lectureship in Ethics at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting.

Alex Mancini-Smith

Alex Mancini-Smith is a senior neonatal nurse with over 30 years experience and is the National Lead Nurse for Neonatal Palliative Care, leading the National Neonatal Palliative Care Project in the UK, the first innovative post of it’s kind. This is a unique role developing the training and education of staff nationally across neonatal, maternity and children’s palliative care teams. She has been instrumental in developing national and international guidelines and frameworks, including robust complex and palliative care pathways.

For the last ten years, Alex has been instrumental in developing the Annual National Neonatal Palliative and End of Life Care conference in collaboration with Child Bereavement UK (CBUK) and is a facilitator for CBUK’s national educational workshops. Alex is an expert member of a central London Clinical Ethics Advisory Board. Alex is frequently invited to speak at national and international conferences and is involved in teaching Neonatal Palliative and End of Life Care on postgraduate courses, has published widely and is the Lead Editor for the ‘Nurses Textbook in Neonatal Palliative Care’, the first textbook of it’s kind, published January 2020. Current work includes the national review of the British Association of Perinatal Medicine’s palliative care framework for practice, previously published in 2010.

Komal Girish Tewani

Adjunct Asst Professor, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. Head, Women’s Palliative Care Service (Gynaecological Oncology and Perinatal Palliative Care), KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore. Komal Girish Tewani initiated and leads the Perinatal Palliative Service in KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital in collaboration with Maternal Foetal Department and Neonatology. She also the Assistant Course Director of the Graduate Diploma in Palliative Medicine and Medical Program Director at Singhealth Duke NUS Palliative Care Center.

Azanna Ahmad Kamar

Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya. Head, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, University of Malaya Medical Centre. Azanna Ahmad Kamar is a neonatologist with interests in paediatric bioethics, infection control, ventilation, medical education, infant nutrition, neonatal transport & resources, quality improvement initiatives, systematic reviews, and neonatal innovations. She heads the Research and Publications committee of the Federation of Asia-Oceania Perinatal Societies (FAOPS) and is a steering committee member of the Malaysian National Neonatal Registry (MNNR). She is a champion of the Malaysian Prematurity Awareness Programme. She also teaches the Special Population course of Masters of Health in Research Ethics (MOHRE) at University Malaya.

Rita Charon,

Professor and Chair of Medical Humanities & Ethics and Professor of Medicine, and Executive Director of Columbia Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, USA.

Rita Charon is a general internist and literary scholar who originated the field of narrative medicine. She directs the Narrative and Social Medicine Scholarly Projects Concentration Track as well as the required and elective Narrative Medicine curriculum for the medical school. She also inaugurated and teaches in the Master of Science in Narrative Medicine graduate program at Columbia University. She is the author of Narrative Medicine: Honoring the Stories of Illness (2006) and co-author of Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (2017).

Yukie Kurihara

Project Professor at Sophia University Institute of Grief Care, Japan. Lecturer at Okayama University and Iwate Medical University, Japan.

Yukie Kurihara has a Masters of Science in Social Work and Master of Science in Palliative Medicine. She teaches Narrative Medicine, Grief and Bereavement Care and Principles of Spiritual Care to medical and nursing students and palliative care trainees. She is also a psychotherapist at the Division of Palliative Care at Komagome Hospital,Tokyo and Shizuoka Cancer Centre, Shizuoka.