Duration
5 weeksWeekly study
3 hours100% online
How it works
Palliative Care: Providing Psychosocial and Spiritual Support
This course has been certified by the CPD Certification Service as conforming to continuing professional development principles. Find out more.
Deploy patient-centred care strategies to enhance end-of-life support
Serious and life-threatening illnesses often impact the emotional and spiritual well-being of patients and their support network. Ensuring they have the right resources and care is essential in helping them cope.
Join the University of Colorado on this five-week course to discover ways to address common psycho-social-spiritual concerns in palliative care. You’ll gain insights into easing suffering, managing anxiety, and providing meaningful support for patients and their families facing serious and life-limiting illnesses.
Ease pain and suffering by spotting the signs of psychosocial distress
You’ll start this course by exploring common ways illnesses can affect emotional and spiritual well-being and lead to stress.
Explore coping strategies for seriously ill patients and their support networks suffering from anxiety and depression
Create strategies that ease patient suffering and help manage anxiety, death anxiety, grief, depression, and spiritual distress. You’ll also learn how to plan for and administer end-of-life care.
Advocate for advanced care planning
By the end of this course, you’ll learn how to plan your healthcare future. Attain the skills to set goals, decide treatment plans, select a power of attorney, and speak with loved ones.
Learn more about palliative care from the University of Colorado
Throughout this course, you’ll be guided by the University of Colorado’s team of experts, many of whom are qualified healthcare professionals specialising in palliative care.
If you’re interested in delving further into palliative care, the University of Colorado offers several other courses on pain management, whole-person assessment, and easing psycho-social-spiritual distress. Find them[here] (https://www.futurelearn.com/partners/university-of-colorado-system).
Syllabus
Week 1
Introduction to Common Psycho-Social-Spiritual Concerns
What are Common Psycho-Social-Spiritual Concerns?
We will look at some common psychological concerns for people who have serious and life-limiting illnesses.
Anxiety and Coping With Serious Illness
In palliative care, our goal is to ease suffering for the whole person. Easing suffering improves the patient's quality of life. Pain and suffering are two different types of experiences.
Help! I Feel Out of Control!
The palliative care approach will support patients and families to help bring some order to their lives when they feel out of control, also called chaos.
Who Can I Count On When I'm Sick?
In this activity, we'll consider relationship concerns. People with serious and life limiting illnesses need a lot of support from other people.
What About Intimacy?
The importance of quality of life including sexual health grows as well. A person's need for physical closeness to touch and be touched is crucial and dramatically affects quality of life.
Can I Afford the Care I Need?
In this activity, we're going to explore how financial distress impacts individuals living with serious and life-limiting illness and their families.
Introduction to Common Concerns Assessment
Review Learning Objectives
Week 2
How Sad Is Too Sad?
How Sad Is Too Sad?
In this activity, you'll learn about sadness related to serious and life-limiting illness. It's normal to feel sad and even hopeless about what's happening.
Grief: Waves of Sadness
You'll learn about the types of losses people may experience with serious illness. Serious and life-threatening illnesses affect more than just the patient. Illness also affects family members and non-family care providers.
Caregivers Also Grieve
Providing care can also be a challenging experience. Caregivers are exposed to losses and grief within the web and they have their own losses and grief to manage.
Life Has Lost Its Meaning
In this activity, we will talk about what it looks like when patients or family members dealing with serious or life-threatening illness feel like life has lost its meaning — also known as Demoralization Syndrome.
Sadness That Lingers
Many people who have serious and life limiting illnesses experience depression. It's the most common mental health problem in palliative care.
Desire For Hastened Death
We'll review risks and signs that someone with a serious illness wishes to die sooner than death would naturally occur.
How Sad Is Too Sad Assessment
Review Learning Objectives
Week 3
Anxiety and Coping
Anxiety and Coping With Serious Illness
In this activity, we will learn about why people with serious or life-limiting illnesses may feel anxious.
Death Anxiety
Death anxiety includes feelings of dread, apprehension, and fear when thinking about the process of dying. Here, we will look at anxiety about death and dying.
How You Can Help Ease Anxiety
Your relationship with the palliative care patient and family is important. We will talk about ways you can help ease anxiety related to serious illness.
How Do People Cope With Serious Illness?
Coping means trying to manage stressful or challenging experiences. Let's talk about how people respond to or cope with serious illness.
Provide Support and Care in the Last Days of Life
Here, we are going to learn about providing support and care for someone in the last days of life.
Comfort Care Plans
It is important to determine what the patient's preferences for care are and then document and honor them. We'll review how to develop a plan of care that provides support for patients and families in their last days of life.
Care of the Body
Once someone has died, the care does not stop there. The healthcare professional continues to care for the body and grieving loved ones.
Anxiety and Coping Assessment
Review Learning Objectives
Week 4
Easing Spiritual Distress
Easing Spiritual Distress
We will discover how people living with serious and life-limiting illnesses might experience spiritual distress.
Respectful Spiritual Conversations
Spiritual conversations focus on people's core values. Let's learn how to have respectful spiritual conversations.
Why is Meaning Making Important?
Let's explore why it is important for us to be aware of how people make meaning of serious illness.
Ways to Understand Serious Illness
In this activity, we will look at ways to understand serious illness.
Spiritual Distress or Spiritual Crisis?
Let's look at the difference between spiritual struggles, spiritual distress, and spiritual crisis.
Miracles and Hope
Palliative care patients and family members may talk about their hope for miracle treatments or miraculous recoveries, especially near the end-of-life.
Easing Spiritual Distress Assessment
Review Learning Objectives
Week 5
Advocating Advance Care Planning, Shared Decision Making, Goals of Care, and Family Meetings: “We Cannot Direct the Wind But We Can Adjust the Sails.”
Everything You Want To Know About ACP
Let's consider what's important to you for your future healthcare.
What is an Advance Directive (AD)?
Explore the Advanced Directive planning process and see which one works for you.
Advocating For The Seriously Ill Person
Talking with your loved ones about end-of-life care is important. This activity will give you the skills and knowledge needed to make this process simpler and easier to understand.
Medical Durable Power of Attorney (MDPOA)
Here, we will talk about how and who you should pick to be your healthcare decision maker.
What If We Didn't Talk About It?
The role of the healthcare decision-maker for someone who is seriously ill can be overwhelming. Learn more about how to decide care when a conversation was not made with the ill person.
What Should I Say?
Talking with your loved ones about your own wishes can be difficult. Learn more about how to approach this discussion.
Goals of Care
All people have hopes, desires, wishes, and goals for how they want to live their lives. Goals of care are important to identify because these are the center around which all medical treatments should resolve.
PERSON
In this activity, we will discuss a simple way to unfold goals of care with patients and family caregivers.
You Mean I Get To Decide?
Learn more about the approach that allows patients and clinicians to work together to make decisions, choose tests, and decide on treatment plans.
Family Conference
Family conferences are the ideal place to have all the interested individuals discuss goals of care. It is a great place for the seriously ill person to talk about what is important to them.
Martha Sturdivant
Here, we will learn about Martha Studivant's story and case study.
Advocating Advance Care Planning, Shared Decision Making, Goals of Care, and Family Meetings Assessment
Review Learning Objectives
When would you like to start?
Start straight away and join a global classroom of learners. If the course hasn’t started yet you’ll see the future date listed below.
Available now
Learning on this course
On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Identify common psychological, social, and spiritual concerns to provide whole person care to people with serious illnesses.
- Explain loss, grief, and mourning to provide palliative care to the whole person.
- Describe how serious and life-threatening illnesses may affect financial resources in order to help people cope with these challenges.
- Evaluate when a person is experiencing spiritual distress or spiritual crisis to provide help or refer the person to an expert provider.
- Identify goals of care and the role this plays in a person's health care.
- Apply communication skills to help patients and family express their own preferences for care in the last days of life.
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for healthcare providers working with seriously ill patients and their families, including nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and allied health professionals.
It’ll also be helpful for family and community members of the seriously ill.
Who will you learn with?
F. Amos Bailey MD FACP, FAAHPM (retired) Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado, School of Medicine and the Emeritus Director of the MS of Palliative Care Community HPM Fellowship
Who developed the course?
University of Colorado
The University of Colorado is a recognized leader in higher education on the national and global stage. We collaborate to meet the diverse needs of our students and communities. We promote innovation, encourage discovery and support the extension of knowledge in ways unique to the state of Colorado and beyond.
Ways to learn | Subscribe & save | Buy this course | Limited access |
---|---|---|---|
Choose the best way to learn for you! | $349.99 for one year Automatically renews | $109/one-off payment | Free |
Develop skills to further your career | Fulfill your current learning need | Sample the course materials | |
Access to this course | tick | tick | Access expires 18 Dec 2024 |
Access to 1,000+ courses | tick | cross | cross |
Learn at your own pace | tick | tick | cross |
Discuss your learning in comments | tick | tick | tick |
Certificate when you're eligible | Digital only | Printed and digital | cross |
Cancel for free anytime |
Ways to learn
Choose the best way to learn for you!
Buy this course
$109/one-off payment
Fulfill your current learning need
- Access to this course
- Learn at your own pace
- Discuss your learning in comments
- Printed and digital certificate when you’re eligible
Subscribe & save
$349.99 for one year
Automatically renews
Develop skills to further your career
- Access to this course
- Access to 1,000+ courses
- Learn at your own pace
- Discuss your learning in comments
- Digital certificate when you're eligible
Cancel for free anytime
Limited access
Free
Sample the course materials
- Access expires 18 Dec 2024
Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades) |
Find out more about certificates, Unlimited or buying a course (Upgrades)
Learning on FutureLearn
Your learning, your rules
- Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
- Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
- Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores
Join a global classroom
- Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
- Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
- Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others
Map your progress
- As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
- Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
- Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate
Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn
Do you know someone who'd love this course? Tell them about it...
More courses you might like
Learners who joined this course have also enjoyed these courses.
Browse more in Healthcare & Medicine