About this course
This course is written for hospice staff, not adapted from general workplace wellness material. It starts from what makes hospice different: every patient on your caseload dies, the losses accumulate, and nothing in the day marks them. Part one separates three things that are routinely confused and that have different causes and different remedies - burnout as the World Health Organization defines it, compassion fatigue as the ProQOL defines it (burnout plus secondary traumatic stress), and moral distress and moral injury as the Surgeon General's advisory describes them. It also covers compassion satisfaction, the protective factor most training leaves out. Part two teaches the warning signs in yourself, using the five domains identified in a concept analysis of compassion fatigue in palliative care nursing, and the warning signs in a colleague, with actual sentences for saying something. Part three covers cumulative loss and grief that has nowhere to go: what to do in the days after a patient you loved dies, and which debriefing and team rituals are worth the time. Part four covers boundaries with patients and families you have grown close to, and what the agency owes you - including an honest account of what the hospice Conditions of Participation do and do not require. Part five covers the family caregiver's burnout, which hospice staff are usually the first to see, and how to get caregiver strain into the plan of care where it belongs under 418.54 and 418.56. Practical throughout, with no wellness platitudes.