The snow is melting, the sun is out, and we are looking forward to the spring season with updates on the latest from our donors, care specialists, group meetings, volunteer appreciation, and more! Read more to find out the latest from our Spring Newsletter. A few highlights are included below:

Understanding Palliative Care, palliative care is often misunderstood to be one and the same as hospice care, but palliative care is NOT hospice care. It does not replace the patient’s primary treatment but works together with the primary treatment being received. It focuses on the pain, symptoms, and stress of serious illness most often as an adjunct to curative care modalities.

TRU Community Care is excited to introduce our renovated TRU Palliative Care (TPC) program which takes an interdisciplinary approach! This approach provides coordinated care with the patient’s primary physician in order to enhance the patient’s healthcare experience, improve the patient’s quality of life, and ensure that treatments and care are focused on the patient and family’s goals of care. TPC is a collaborative approach to managing your physical, emotional, and social needs depending on your needs.

Tele-Consult Study Partnership with mHealth Impact Lab and CU, TRU recently solidified a partnership with mHealth Impact Lab at the Colorado School of Public Health, CU Anschutz Medical Campus. This partnership will lend additional strength and validity to TRU’s tele-consult study, which was launched in October, thanks to a grant from NextFifty Initiative. TRU strives to better meet patients’ needs in the most efficient and affordable way possible; the final study results will be shared with CMS and NHPCO in an effort to influence the ability of hospices to use the tele-consult model to complete regulatorily required face-to-face visits.

We Honor Veterans, Our veterans have bravely served us. It is now our privilege to serve them. Veterans with life-limiting illnesses face unique issues that can exacerbate physical and emotional symptoms at an already difficult time. In response to these challenges, TRU Community Care offers TRU Heroes, a special end-of-life care program that’s based on the principles of comfort, choice, dignity, and respect and tailored to the specific needs of veterans and their families. If you are a veteran or someone who is passionate about serving veterans and would like to assist with our We Honor Veterans efforts, please contact info@trucare.org.

We Honor Volunteers, This week is national volunteer appreciation week and we celebrated with a luncheon to honor our loyal volunteers. Our volunteers serve the TRU Community Care mission by supporting our patients and their families, in grief, and with administrative tasks. We’re so thankful for the important work they do to support our cause. Special thanks to the youth group of First United Methodist Church in Lafayette for donating decorations, Chili’s of Lafayette for donating the food, the Threshold Singers and Brune Macary for providing musical entertainment, and TRU staff who helped put the event together. It was a wonderful occasion!

TRU Grief Groups Explore Expressive Arts, we are thrilled to offer two new grief groups, Yoga After Loss and Writing Through Grief.

Yoga After Loss is a support group for those who wish to explore grief through the practice of yoga, using breath-work, poses, and meditation. This group meets on Wednesdays in Lafayette from 6:00 – 7:30 p.m. for six consecutive weeks.

Writing Through Grief is a support group that meets on Wednesdays in Boulder from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. for six consecutive weeks. Loss and writing are both very personal experiences. This class provides the opportunity to blend the two in a safe, non-judgmental setting.

Visit here to register.

TRU Ethics Committee, Founded in the 1990s, TRU’s ethics committee was among the nation’s earliest hospice ethics committees in the country. The committee serves in an advisory capacity to:

1. Provide input to TRU administration on program policy that has ethical dimensions
2. Assist in developing guiding documents related to ethical issues
3. Provide an arena in which staff can discuss current clinical/patient care dilemmas, prepare to prevent and resolve ethical dilemmas, and conduct retrospective review of difficult cases
4. Plan educational offerings for staff on ethical issues

The process of ethics consultation helps answer the question, “what is the best/right thing to do here?”

TRUe Friends Give Back, Dr. Alan Snyder, the founding Medical Director of Boulder Hospice (now TRU Community Care), created the “Circles of Life” sculpture, inspired by TRU’s mission. Dr. Snyder generously donated the sculpture to TRU on behalf of TRUe Friends, a group dedicated to supporting and advancing exemplary care at the end of life, including the leaders (*) who founded TRU as Boulder Hospice in 1976. Thank you to the members of this incredible group: Al Canner, Jane Carlson, John Fleagle, Carolyn Henninger, Ardee Imerman, Jean Jasmine, *Marcia Lattanzi Licht, Heather Le Masurier, Jere Mock, *Kathryn Oakes, *Beau Rezendes,
Peggy Richardson, Claire Riley, Judy Schilling, Darv Smith, *Alan Snyder, *Karin Sobeck, and Peg Young. “Circles of Life” is located outside the main entrance to TRU PACE on Park Lane in Lafayette. Please stop by to see the sculpture and to take a tour of PACE!

Donor Spotlight, TRU PACE recently received a generous $15,000 grant from the Herbert and Judy Paige Family Foundation in support of
our work to provide preventive, primary, acute, and long-term care services that enable elderly individuals to continue living safely in the community. This grant specifically allows TRU PACE to expand usage of MedaCubes, which are “medication robots” with web portal analytics to help frail elders take their medications as prescribed and maintain their independence.

Save the Date! These events are coming up this spring and summer:

• Veteran Benefits Seminar: Education on End of Life Care Planning, Wednesday, May 1, Howe Mortuary in Longmont
• Caregiver Symposium, Wednesday, May 22, Boulder Jewish Community Center
• Butterfly Memorial and Release, Saturday, June 22, TRU PACE Labyrinth in Lafayette
• TRU Palisade Peaches Sale, Peach Pick-Up: Saturday, August 10, TRU PACE in Lafayette

Visit trucare.org/events for more information!

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