Catholic Medical Association’s 87th Annual Educational Conference Begins and Will Focus on Restoring Compassionate Patient Care in a Technocratic Age
Topics to include: End of Life/Palliative Care, Cannabis/Opioid Abuse, Abortion Pill Reversal, Combating Physician Burnout
PHILADELPHIA, PA September 19, 2018 – The Catholic Medical Association’s Annual Educational Conference will provide strategies for today’s Catholic medical professionals on how to best balance modern issues of technocracy versus providing compassionate Christ-like care to patients. The conference, “Restoring Healthcare in A Technocratic Age,” will be held September 20-22, 2018 at the Renaissance Dallas Addison Hotel, in Addison, TX.
Other seminar issues include an End-of-Life Forum (pre-conference September 19), Patient-Centered Care, Prayer and Meditation in Healing, Protecting Catholic Health Care Professional’s Conscience Rights and Religious Freedoms.
“Technocracy poses another challenge to providing good care to our patients. While technologies like bureaucratic regulations can serve the needs of the patient, and help run a practice, but often technology is contrary to Catholic centered healthcare and can usurp the good of the patient. We need to look past computer screens and into the faces of patients,” said Conference Chair John A. Schirger, M.D.
Discussions include how technocracy often commodifies the patient violating the conscience of practitioners by depersonalizing and even taking the lives of the most vulnerable members of society. The conference will offer alternative ways to best deliver compassionate care.
“We are all called, as physicians and healthcare providers, to practice medicine in accord with the natural law and the teachings of Christ. At our best, we try to see the face of Christ in our patients, often in difficult circumstances. There are cultural influences that make this especially difficult in today’s culture of death,” said CMA Dallas Guild President Roy Heyne, M.D.
The CMA’s inaugural pre-conference The End of Life Forum will be the first of its kind initiative examining the field of palliative medicine and end of life care in America through ethical, religious, and clinical lenses. The End of Life Forum is being held today. This is especially critical as healthcare practitioners face the growing call for legal physician-assisted suicide laws. Palliative medicine specialists will provide education on the Church’s teachings about end of life care and how it can be successfully applied in medical care today.
CME credits are available for this conference. The Keynote Speaker is Senator Rick Santorum. His speech, scheduled for Saturday evening September 22, is entitled: American Healthcare Through the Eyes of a Dad with a Special Child.
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The Catholic Medical Association is a national, physician-led community of over 2,200 healthcare professionals consisting of 104 local guilds. CMA’s mission is to inform, organize, and inspire its members, in steadfast fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Church, to uphold the principles of the Catholic faith in the science and practice of medicine.
