Mortician Shows Every Step a Body Goes Through at a Funeral Home
Victor M. Sweeney, a licensed funeral director and mortician, gives a tour of a funeral home in Minnesota. From the intricate processes and tools used to embalm a body to the "selection room" filled with caskets and urns, this unique tour gives unprecedented access to a mortuary and funeral chapel. 13:58 min
Understanding The Dying Process: An Information Booklet For Families
This booklet has been compiled to help answer some difficult questions that you may have about the dying process. It is important to remember that just as each person is unique so too will be their death. It is almost impossible to tell you the exact time or manner in which a person will die. However, regardless of the illness, there are several similar physical symptoms and emotional changes likely to occur as death approaches.
Center for Bioethics Ethics Grand Rounds Webinar Series
The Center for Bioethics Ethics Grand Rounds is made up of academic webinars regarding the ethics and implications around medical aid-in-dying.
VitalTalk's Guide For Clinicians On Patient Centered Communication
Clinicians and advanced practice providers alike leave our courses feeling more confident in their ability to deliver serious news and discuss goals of care. Upon completion, you’ll become part of the deeply committed VitalTalk community which offers continued support, including additional train-the-trainer Faculty Development programs, so you can further integrate better communication skills at your institution.
VitalTalk resource guides include:
Grief Reactions, Duration, and Tasks of Mourning
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.
UT Health San Antonio Resources On Delivering Bad News
This video series from UT Health San Antonio provides shortened examples of how healthcare professionals should/shouldn't handle encounters regarding the delivery of difficult news. Useful for healthcare providers looking for simple guides for best practice in such situations.
Minnesota Health Care Directive Planning Toolkit
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.
Death, Grief and Funerals in the COVID Age
Grief and death are on everyone’s mind. For most of us the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated death and collective grief is unprecedented. Combined with social distancing protocol, end-of life issues, death care, and grief have become even more complex.
SPIKES—A Six-Step Protocol for Delivering Bad News: Application to the Patient with Cancer
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.
Medical Aid-In-Dying
Medical Aid-In-Dying discusses the ethical and legal issues surrounding the practice of physician-assisted death (MAiD), where a doctor provides a patient with lethal medication at their request to end their life. It highlights that while most states prohibit MAiD, a few have legalized it, and debates continue within the medical and legal communities. The article emphasizes that state-of-the-art palliative care should be the primary approach to end-of-life suffering, with MAiD considered only as a last resort.