Goals of Care Conversations Training for Physicians, Advance Practice Nurses, & Physician Assistants
This training program consists of flexible, interactive modules to help practitioners improve their skills in delivering serious news and discussing goals of care and life-sustaining treatment decisions with seriously ill patients. It is intended for practitioners who care for patients with serious illness in outpatient, inpatient, long-term care, and home care settings.
Standards for Palliative and End of Life Care From The National Association Of Social Workers
All social workers, regardless of practice settings, will inevitably work with clients facing acute or long-term situations involving life-limiting illness, dying, death, grief, and bereavement.
Using their expertise in working with populations from varying cultures, ages, socioeconomic status, and nontraditional families, social workers help families across the life span in coping with trauma, suicide, and death, and must be prepared to assess such needs and intervene appropriately.
National Association Of School Psychologists Resources On Addressing Grief
National Association Of School Psychologists provides a broad set of resources on addressing grief and aspects common in children grieving. The website also provides related resources on responding to and supporting anticipatory rief, addressing grief in children, and how to cope as a caregiver providing support to someone gieving.
Facts and tips:
The Dying Patient: Merck Manual Professional Edition
The approach to end-of-life care varies widely throughout the world and is influenced by medical, cultural, social, and legal considerations. The clinician must consider these factors when managing the care of a dying patient.
Dying patients have needs that differ from those of other patients. So that their needs are met, dying patients must first be identified. Before death, patients tend to follow 1 of 3 general trajectories of functional decline:
-
A limited period of steadily progressive functional decline (eg, typical of an aggressive cancer)
Symptom Relief for the Dying Patient
Physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual distress is common among patients living with fatal illness, and patients commonly fear protracted and unrelieved suffering. Health care providers help reassure patients that distressing symptoms are regularly anticipated, prevented and, when present, treated.
Dying in America. Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life
Dying in America evaluates strategies to integrate care into a person- and family-centered, team-based framework, and makes recommendations to create a system that coordinates care and supports and respects the choices of patients and their families.
Your Conversation Starter Guide: How to talk about what matters to you and have a say in your health care.
This is a tool to help you talk about what matters to you and your wishes for the care you receive through the end of life. Talking with the important people in our life can bring us closer together. It also helps us create the foundation of a care plan that’s right for us — a plan that will be available when the need arises. The Conversation Project wants to help everyone talk about their wishes for care through the end of life, so those wishes can be understood and respected.
Autism and Grief All Professionals Program
This is a 90-minute continuing education program designed to empower social workers, nurses, paraprofessionals, speech therapists, occupational therapists, and other caring professionals in their service to adults with autism experiencing grief and loss. Expert panelists will examine the disenfranchisement that can occur for grieving people with autism and discuss ways to enfranchise them during their grief journey. The program will also address grief after non-death losses, anticipatory mourning, and how adults with autism may best be supported.
Complimentary Education Programs From The Hospice Foundation
These free Hospital Foundation of America programs are useful resources for hospice and grief professionals, hospice volunteers, grief support groups, or the broader community.Resource includes webinars and self-study programs. Many programs are freely available, though without CE credit. CE credit is available with program purchase.
Honoring Choices: A Comprehensive List Of Resources On Advanced Care Planning
Who would speak for you if you couldn’t speak for yourself? Advance Care Planning (ACP) is a process which helps you think about, talk about, and write down your preferences for future health care. While it is not an easy topic to consider, it is important for every adult 18+ to have a health care directive – a written plan for loved ones and healthcare providers to follow – so that your wishes are known in case a severe injury or illness renders you unable to communicate.