Palliative Pupus Learn and Mingle

We’d like to invite you to our virtual and hybrid Palliative Pupus

Our exciting local bi-monthly networking and clinical education opportunity on zoom.  Come participate in an interactive interdisciplinary story from the cutting edge of hospice and palliative care and mingle with colleagues from all over the islands on zoom. If you are involved with palliative care cases, you are invited. Please tell your colleagues and friends. 

We will continue to meet virtually on zoom in 2024. In addition we meet every second month in person at the QCC and offer a hybrid format. To include neighbor islands we will remain on zoom in a hybrid format.

2024 as a nice design

Dates for 2024:

  • January 17
  • March 20 (hybrid)
  • May 17
  • July 15 (hybrid)
  • September 18
  • November 20 (hybrid)

Please join us bi-monthly on the:

Third Wednesday of every second month
5:15 PM – 6:30 pm

How does Palliative Pupus work?

The theme and presenters for each ‘Palliative Pupus’ is announced one to two weeks prior to the meeting date via our Kōkua Mau eNewsletter. If you are not receiving our eNewsletter yet, please subscribe here and we will keep you informed.

What is Palliative Pupus?

Our first successful Palliative Pupus meeting was held November 17, 2010 and has since become a bi-monthly event every third Wednesday of the month. (Except November due to Thanksgiving)

The model is an informal, interactive, collegial, pau hana to present and discuss challenging cases as a group.  Palliative Pupus is for clinicians in a variety of fields: doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains.

Queen’s Conference Center for Palliative Pupus.

The Queens Conference Center (QCC)Room 200
510 S. Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813

Please join us bi-monthly on the:

  • Palliative Pupus meets in Room 200 on the second floor of the Queen’s Conference Center
  • Each meeting’s topic is announced in a Kōkua Mau reminder eNewsletter one week prior to the event
  • More on parking near QCC

Please RSVP as soon as possible to Jeannette Koijane.  There is validated parking at the QCC.

  • Park for free at the municipal Civic Center parking lot on South Beretania after 4 PM (see map below)
  • Park in the Queen’s Miller parking lot for validated parking (pricey without the sticker). See map.
  • Across the street at the DOH now has a two hour maximum enforced 24 hours (gone are the good old days).

http://goo.gl/maps/PToQ5

Map to the QCC in Honolulu

Please note:

Map with parking tips for QCC in Honolulu

There is FREE parking after 4 PM in the municipal lot on South Beretania, just Diamond Head of Queen’s. You may have to look a bit, but free is hard to beat downtown.


Examples of past Palliative Pupus themes:

January 2024: We heard about the interdisciplinary approach to the care of a young ventilator-dependent veteran with ALS who was admitted to hospice with significant pain and existential distress.

July 2023: The case involved the withdrawl of a vent at home and the unique challenges and polices to help patients die at home with their loved ones. 

Wed. January 2020 The team presented on their experience of providing care to a patient with newly diagnosed metastatic cancer of unknown primary. A farm laborer who had arrived recently from China, his care involved numerous medical and psycho-social challenges.

Wed. May 2019: One hospice’s first experience with the Our Care, Our Choice Act including the interdisciplinary team response.

Wed. Sept 19, 2018:

  • What happens when the providers and the patients have different views of compliance and meetings goals of care?
  • What happens when the providers feel they know what is best for a patient but he doesn’t comply?

Wed. January 2018: We heard how the hospital and hospice teams struggle together to find a balance between patient safety with honoring a vulnerable patient’s final wishes.

Wed. July 19, 2017: This month we will hear one care team’s journey responding to a request for futile care from a dying patient.

Wed. May 17, 2017: This month we will hear about one woman’s journey through abuse, mental illness, homelessness, and cancer and the miraculous power of friendship.

Wed. Dec. 2, 2015: This month we will hear about a man’s spiritual and existential distress and the ways the palliative care providers facilitated his and his family’s coming to terms with his last weeks of life.

Wed. 9/16 2015: This month’s case features a patient, family, and interdisciplinary team supporting each other when a 21 year-old presents with incurable disease.

January 15, 2014: A man with end-stage heart failure is “stuck” in intensive care unless a sophisticated individualized hospice care plan can be developed.  Learn about new ways to care for people with advanced heart failure and their families in Hawai’i.

July 17, 2013: In this session, using our case-based format, we hear how the palliative care program at Kaiser has learned to turn withdrawal of life support into a family-centered ceremony of remembrance.  

May 15, 2013: We will heard about successful upstreaming of access to hospice and palliative care in the Queen’s Medical Center emergency department.

March 20, 2013:  This March meeting will feature discussion of a pediatric hospice patient, born with a terminal neuromuscular illness. The child’s parents will join the hospice team in discussing their journey.

January 16, 2013: This month’s case will feature transitions in care for a patient between outpatient palliative care, acute care, and hospice.  Other themes for discussion will include management of problem opioid-taking behaviors in hospice and challenges to care posed by non-adherence to medical care.

July 18, 2012: This month’s case discussion will again follow a patient from diagnosis, through disease-directed treatment, hospice care and death.  Features of the case that will be discussed will include caring for young adults, caring for patients with a history of mental illness and chemical dependence, timely transition to hospice, and palliative sedation in the home.

May 16, 2012: This month’s discussion will feature a case where the hospital-based palliative care team and the home hospice team had to resolve mutual concerns for patient safety including the potential for domestic violence.  In a broader sense we will consider: when is it not safe to go home and who decides?

March 21, 2012 : Please join us for an evening of networking and mutual learning.  This month’s cases (3/21/2012) will be infants with lethal congenital heart conditions.  Discussion topics are expected to include pediatric palliative care, complex hospice cases, inter-island challenges, ethical dilemmas, and palliative sedation in children.