End-of-life, palliative care
Michelle Funk Coltman can speak to the ethical issues relating to illness, mental health, treatment of those at the end of their life and those requiring support for medical assistance in dying.
National Health Ethics week is April 1-7. It is an opportunity for health-care professionals across Canada to come together and bring awareness to the many issues surrounding ethical issues in nursing.
Background
Michelle Funk Coltman is a registered nurse and a senior lecturer in TRU’s School of Nursing. For 15 years her focus and experience have been in palliative and end-of-life care. Her passion emerged early on in her career from her experience with pediatric bone marrow and organ transplants at Vancouver General Hospital and UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital. She has experience in Eastern Africa in a fistula hospital and administration of polio vaccine and has travelled the world working in various palliative care roles.
Michelle has a Master of Science in Nursing from UBC focused on researching the integration of arts and humanities into nursing education. She has a second master’s degree in health research with a palliative care focus. Her research concentrated on the examination of the phenomena of disenfranchised grief for nurses who work on acute care units, to better understand the notion of communication loss in Parkinson’s disease and other neurological related conditions.
Michelle has taught at TRU for 15 years and supervises nurses in the Master of Nursing program. She teaches courses in:
- death and dying
- life and living, relational practice
- self and others in nursing practice settings
Contact
Michelle Funk Coltman, Senior Lecturer, School of Nursing at TRU
250-574-3186 | Mfunk@tru.ca
