Healing When There Is No Cure: Neonatal Comfort Care

A unique medical care program for babies with very short life expectancy

A discussion with Dr. Elvira PARRAVICINI, MD, Neonatologist, Founder and Director of the Neonatal Comfort Care Program, Columbia University Medical Center, Frances McCARTHY, MS, RNC, Clinical Care Coordinator of the Neonatal Comfort Care Program, Columbia University Medical Center, and Alessandra ROSE, Maggie’s mother

Presented by Crossroads Cultural Center and Columbia Catholic Ministry in collaboration with the Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity

We all know that modern medicine has brought us enormous benefits by putting science and technology at the service of human health. What is sometimes forgotten is that, ultimately, medicine cannot be reduced to a strictly technical discipline, for the simple reason that people are not just machines in need of repair. Indeed, patients and their families are persons. This word expresses the fact that they live in relationships with other people and they also thirst for meaning, a word that also expresses a type of relationship, with the totality of being. Truly caring for a patient requires, at some level, caring for a person, and often contemporary medicine chooses to ignore this crucial question. The insufficiency of the purely technical approach to medicine is particularly obvious when one knows that the patient will not recover, as is the case for some infants who are affected by life-limiting conditions or terminal illnesses. In that case, it is an easy temptation to think that medicine has reached the boundary of its technical powers, and should just let nature run its course as quickly as possible. Therefore, it is striking to meet medical professionals who recognize that medicine is a human endeavor, and who are willing to really look at babies and their parents as people, in the belief that, no matter how brief, each baby’s life is precious and needs to be welcomed and cherished. Tonight, we have the privilege to learn about one such group of medical professionals, the Neonatal Comfort Care Program at New York Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.

Dr Elvira Parravicini (the Program's Medical Director), nurse Fran McCarthy (the Program's Care Coordinator) and Alessandra Rose (Maggie’s mother) will share experiences of beauty and love within the drama of a baby born with short life expectancy.

The event is free and open to the public.

About this Event

Date: Thursday, October 22, 2015
Time: 7pm
Location: Columbia University, Low Library Faculty Room
2960 Broadway (enter campus at 116th St.)
New York, NY
campus map

About the Speakers

Elvira Parravicini, MD
Neonatologist, Founder and Director of the Neonatal Comfort Care Program, Columbia University Medical Center

Fran McCarthy, MS, RNC,
Clinical Care Coordinator of the Neonatal Comfort Care Program, Columbia University Medical Center

Alessandra Rose
Maggie’s mother

Invitation

Download the invitation here.

Transcript

Not available

Video

Part I
Part IB
Part II
Part IIB

Photos - click on image below