Kate Dean-Haidet

Kate Dean-Haidet has worked since graduation in 2012 as an Integrative Mental Health Advanced Practice Provider at OhioHealth Hospice & Palliative Care, an end-of-life care program and practice development in a large hospital system in central Ohio. Her dissertation focused on the relational matrix of spiritual end-of-life care. Presently, Kate provides direct end-of-life care as a nurse practitioner, as well as education, consultation, and research that seeks to improve the end-of-life experience for all involved. For the past five years, she has investigated the roots of moral distress and burnout in hospice/palliative care clinicians as the ethical field of medicine dramatically changes. She continues to highlight cultural awareness from the standpoint of what patients and families bring to the caregiving scenario, as well as inspiring critiques of contemporary healthcare and discussion of ways to create more inclusive and compassionate cultures of care. As chair of the transdisciplinary program & practice development committee, she has helped to expand hospice/palliative medicine case conferences to move beyond strictly medical issues and physician-only involvement, to include all disciplines, all care sites, and all dimensions of patients/families—including consideration of the cultural contexts of both caregivers and care-receivers. Her doctoral work in Comparative Studies was invaluable in this work, especially for honing her writing and speaking skills as a way to advocate for radical cultural change. She is the Primary Investigator on the CARE Project (Comfort Awareness & Resiliency Education), a multisite educational initiative teaching culturally competent and trauma-responsive care strategies to end-of-life interdisciplinary teams, and Co-Investigator on the TIRED Project (Trending Institutional Reasons for Emotional Distress), a multisite inquiry into the ongoing moral distress of interdisciplinary healthcare teams working in hospice & palliative care during the Covid-19 pandemic.