Resource Center

Pet quality of life scales are used to determine on a numeric basis how your pet is feeling. A QOL quiz helps you address different variables in your pet’s life to assess their overall comfort and happiness. Quality of life scales are typically used when a pet has a terminal illness or is at an end of life stage.

About The Organization: Journeys Home Pet Euthanasia LLC is an at-home pet euthanasia service that also has a lot of great information on euthanasia and assessing quality of life in pets.

Women's Institute for Secure Retirement offers a checklist of documents and other materials needed for end-of-life planning. The list includes

This Whole Health tool focuses on grief related to a death loss. A focus on other types of losses (such as disability, divorce, job loss, effects of natural disasters) is beyond the scope of Coping with Grief and related tools. However, you may find the information in this Whole Health tool helpful when working with a Veteran who has experienced a loss other than death.

Why do I need a health care directive? Simply put, putting your wishes about your health care in writing helps make sure they'll be known and followed by family, friends, health care providers and others. Sometimes decisions must be made when a person isn't able to decide or communicate preferences. A health care directive communicates your wishes when you’re not able to. The Minnesota Health Care Directive Planning Toolkit helps you create a health care directive. The toolkit contains step-by-step instructions (and suggested forms) for completing a health care directive. 

We describe a protocol for disclosing unfavorable information—“breaking bad news”—to cancer patients about their illness. Straightforward and practical, the protocol meets the requirements defined by published research on this topic. The protocol (SPIKES) consists of six steps.

The Stanford Letter Project tools to helps people write letters about their wishes for care in the future. These letter templates are specifically designed to help people voice the key information needed to help them prepare for the future. 

This practice tool from ACT on Alzheimer's provides clinicians a streamlined protocol for managing cognitive impairment and guiding decisions for screening, diagnosis, and disease management. This tool incorporates current best practices for efficient and appropriate dementia care, and includes links to resources. This tool can be used nationally.

NCHWA’s Nursing Workforce Dashboard visualizes data from the 2018 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (NSSRN), which includes detailed information on the nursing workforce in the United States. Use this tool to: view data on the nursing workforce landscape, including demographics, employment, and education for RNs, NPs, and APRNs; analyze results for specific subsets of the data using filters by location, license type, and employment status; and access over 100,000 unique data points from the NSSRN.

The goal of this Gerontology Resources for APRN Preceptors and Students toolkit is to make geriatric and gerontological content accessible to those caring for older adults. It is designed with advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) students, preceptors, and educators in mind, and it provides a single portal to comprehensive resources. The toolkit is organized by primary care topics and includes links to websites and mobile device apps in the public domain.

The goal of the Gerontology Resources for APRNs in Acute and Emergent Care Settings (2nd edition) (“Acute Care Resource Guide”) is to make geriatric and gerontological content easily accessible to those caring for older adults in higher-acuity care settings. It is designed with advanced practice registered nurse (APRN) students, preceptors, clinicians, and educators in mind, and to provide a single portal to comprehensive resources. This Acute Care Resource Guide is organized alphabetically by acute and emergent care topics and includes links to websites and videos available publicly.