Barry R. Ashpole
Communications Consultant & Educator
Ontario, CANADAE-mail: BarryRAshpole@bell.net
Barry Ashpole publishes Media Watch, an annotated listing of current articles, reports, etc., on end-of-life care from the print and broadcast news media and specialist publications in the fields of healthcare and social services (and related fields). International in scope, the weekly report, now in its 14th year of publication, is intended as an advocacy, research and teaching tool. It is posted on the IPCRC website at: http://www.ipcrc.net/archive-global-palliative-care-news.php.
Barry’s involvement in hospice and palliative care dates from 1985. In Canada, he has developed and taught in-class and online courses for frontline care providers on many different aspects of end-of-life care – in Ontario at Niagara College of Applied Arts & Technology, Mohawk College of Applied Arts & Technology, and Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning. Subjects included: communications, consent and informed decision-making; ethical and legal aspects of end-of-life care; psychosocial aspects of end-of-life care; and, death, grief and bereavement.
In addition, Barry has facilitated many workshops, primarily for frontline care providers, on care planning, the family caregiver, and advocacy. In Singapore, he has lectured on end-of-life care at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics (Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore), and also at the Lien Centre for Palliative Care.
As a communications consultant, he has been involved in a broad range of initiatives – from the Canadian government's Compassionate Care Benefit for family caregivers to regional education programs on care planning, communications in the hospice and palliative care setting, and advocacy. More recently, Barry was involved in a needs assessment of bereaved children living in one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of Canada.
For 15 years Barry was the editor of the Pain Management Newsletter, a quarterly, single-sponsored publication that focused primarily on clinical issues in pain and symptom management in the terminally ill. He has edited or produced a number of educational publications for both healthcare professionals and the lay public, for example: The Palliative Patient: Principles of Treatment and Journeys: A Series of Booklets on Dying at Home.
Barry was a contributor to the 5th edition of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine (Nathan Cherny et al., eds, Oxford University Press, U.K., 2015). The section he authored is titled 'Communication with the Public, Policy Makers and the Media.' Barry is also a regular contributor to the monthly newsletter of the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care, and is an occasional contributor to the blog of the European Association for Palliative Care, for example: https://eapcnet.wordpress.com/category/abstract-watch/
Barry is a past president of the former Ontario Palliative Care Association and served for many years on a number of committees, including the planning committee for the annual Ontario provincial palliative care conference.
Barry’s other interests include opera. He has authored and presented widely on a range of operatic subjects and developed a community college course on Italian opera. In February 2021 he published Gigli: The Master Tenor, authored by the late Colin Bain: Home (giglithemastertenor.com). Barry is an enthusiastic record collector and from 1993-2015 was the editor of the peer-reviewed journal of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections (the ARSC Journal), a U.S. based organization with an international membership. He is the recipient of the 2017 'Distinguished Service to ARSC' award. [Biosketch updated 09.14.2021]
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