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Covenant Palliative Care

Palliative Care at Covenant Health

Palliative care is a part of Covenant’s heritage and continues to be a priority today. It goes back to the Sisters of Charity (Grey Nuns) of Montreal who came to Alberta in 1863 with a calling to dedicate their lives to caring for the sick and vulnerable.

The Grey Nuns recognized the need for palliative care and established the first in the city hospital-based program at the Edmonton General in 1985. The program grew out of an identified need for more all-encompassing, trans-disciplinary approaches, and a better understanding of the complex and evolving nature of pain.

In 1988, the Tertiary Palliative Care Unit at the Grey Nuns Community Hospital was established and it evolved into a world-class, multi-disciplinary program for practitioners, students and researchers from around the world.

The Grey Nuns were also instrumental in the creation of a regional palliative care program in 1995 (now known as the Edmonton Zone Palliative Care Program) and the Annual Palliative Education & Research Day conference, now hosted by the Palliative Institute.

In October 2012, Covenant Health launched the Palliative Institute to meet one of its strategic objectives: “We will be leaders in robust palliative and end-of-life care and advocate for it as an essential part of the health care system.”

Sites

Please go to MyHealth.Alberta.ca for access to palliative care services in your area. The Covenant sites listed below are accessed through your local zone services.

Covenant Health would like to acknowledge that what we refer to as Alberta is the traditional ancestral territory of a diversity of Indigenous peoples and home to Treaty 6, 7, and 8. We honor the Blackfoot Confederacy – Kainai, Piikani, and Siksika, the Cree, Dene, Saulteaux, Nakota Sioux, Stoney Nakoda, the Tsuu T’ina Nation and the Métis People of Alberta. This includes the Métis Settlements and the Six Regions of the Métis Nation of Alberta within the historical Northwest Métis Homeland. We recognize and give thanks to the many First Nations, Métis and Inuit who have lived in and cared for these lands for generations, all who continue to grace these lands, and all future generations. We are grateful for the traditional Knowledge Keepers and Elders who are still with us today and those who have gone before us. We make this acknowledgement as an act of reconciliation and gratitude to those whose territory we reside on or are visiting.

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