Created in 2000, the Roger C. Bone Advances in End-of-Life Care Award recognizes outstanding leadership in end-of-life care. Dr. Bone wrote about the ethical and humanistic issues that surround end-of-life decisions as he was dealing with his own terminal diagnosis. He stressed the importance of communication among physicians and their patients. Dr. Bone was a Master Fellow and Past President of ACCP.
The award recipient is selected by a review committee of members from the ACCP Palliative and End-of-Life Care NetWork and other distinguished leaders in end-of-life care. This award gives special recognition to an ACCP member who has shown improved communication, compassion, effective listening between themselves and their patients and families, support of palliative and hospice care, and/or teaching of other physicians.
James A. Avery, MD, FCCP, 
is Senior Medical Director of Visiting Nurse Service of New York Hospice Care, in New York, NY. He also is Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Assistant Clinical Professor at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in New York, NY. The title of his project is “Helping Physicians Help the Dying.” His project centers around the following three key areas: (1) teaching community physicians about hospice/palliative medicine and hospice/palliative medicine principles, such as communication, pain and symptom management, spiritual issues, ethical questions, and care of the imminent dying; (2) increasing physician and medical involvement in hospice care by establishing a standard, where all of his hospice physicians are board-certified and using other methods of patient care and communication to integrate hospice into mainstream medicine; and (3) improving and increasing hospice and palliative medicine standards, so that physicians feel comfortable with hospice and palliative care medicine by raising quality parameters, improving overall education standards, and developing new programs to educate nurses.
The Roger C. Bone Advances in End-of-Life Care Review Committee was co-chaired by Rosemary Bone Mason, RN, and D. Robert McCaffree, MD, Master FCCP, and included the following ACCP members and distinguished doctors in end-of-life care: Ira R. Byock, MD; Richard A. Dart, MD, FCCP; Michael E. Preodor, MD; Daniel E. Ray, MD, FCCP; Paul A. Selecky, MD, FCCP; Stephen C. Telatnik, MD, FCCP; and Basil Varkey, MD, FCCP.