Tacy Silverberg-Urian RN BSN CHPN (she/her) is the immediate Past President of the newly chartered Northern New Jersey Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA). She is founder of Advance Choices (https://advancechoices.org) an organization that provides community education on the importance of advance care planning and advocacy for hospice and palliative care programs. Tacy conducts workshops and lectures for the community and for faculty and students at select universities.
As a member of NHPCO’s (National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization) Advocacy Network, she visits the Hill to advocate and affect public policy to improve end of life care. Tacy recently worked in the Program Development Department of RWJ/Barnabas/VNA Hospice and Palliative Care as an RN hospice liaison. She was responsible for community education on the benefits of hospice and palliative care and advance care planning, evaluated patients for hospice eligibility and appropriateness then transitioned patients from the Acute care setting to the community. She conducted family meetings to discuss goals of care and co-managed hospice patients that required general inpatient care. While working for Metro Jewish Health System (MJHS) Hospice in NYC, she was mentored by their Hospice Medical Director and other Interdisciplinary team members at Zicklin’s Hospice residence in Riverdale and obtained her certification in hospice and palliative care (CHPN).
She is passionate about Transcultural Nursing and believes that cultural congruent care is a “basic human right”. In her
book, The Last Mile of the Way, she concludes that training and matching culturally diverse front-line staff with the
communities served is essential. She recognizes that communities of color are negatively impacted and there is inequity and disparity to access quality end of life care.
Tacy serves on the steering committee of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, Mayor's Wellness Initiative, Conversations of Your Life (COYL) which promotes advance care planning and Bevival.com, a death literacy platform which produces edutainment about end-of-life choices.
She has dedicated over forty years to the health care arena. Early in her career she worked in both the Acute and Post-Acute care settings as a staff nurse and case manager. While living in California, she held posts as a clinical manager, hospice and home health care administrator for a national for-profit organization based in Minnesota and successfully obtained JCAHO accreditation for the entire Northern territory. As a nurse leader for the Visiting Nurse Service of New
York she led the Business Development referral team of one hundred clinical and non-clinical staff and successfully transitioned the work unit to “new cloud technology”, implemented a telework initiative and redesigned the intake workflow to make it more efficient with an eye toward customer service and engagement.
She enjoys yoga and meditation, hiking, biking, traveling, kayaking, family time, and dance performances.