About this course
This course teaches the psychosocial and spiritual side of hospice care to hospice aides, nurses, and the office staff who talk to families on the phone. Part one shows where emotional care sits in the Medicare hospice Conditions of Participation: counseling is a core service the hospice must provide, the comprehensive assessment must identify psychosocial, emotional and spiritual needs, and the interdisciplinary group is required by name to include a social worker or counselor and a pastoral or other counselor. Part two covers what dying people actually fear, and anticipatory grief in both the patient and the family, including the finding that grief before a death does not use up the grief that comes after it. Part three teaches the skills: presence, active listening, what to say and what not to say, the NURSE responses to emotion, and the deliberate use of silence and touch. Part four teaches dignity using Chochinov's A, B, C and D of dignity-conserving care, and the place of life review and legacy work. Part five covers spiritual distress, when and how to bring in the chaplain, and the cultural and religious practices around death that change what a family expects at the bedside. Part six works through families under strain: conflict, denial, and the relative who arrives at the end. The course closes with your own grief and where it belongs. Suitable for hospice aide orientation, annual in-service training, and for any staff member who will be in a room where someone is dying.