The course is designed to refresh or develop team members’ communication skills to provide quality end-of-life and palliative care in long term care homes. The modules include interactive case scenarios that reflect the unique setting and context of care delivery in long-term care homes.
Overview
Three self-paced online modules around 20 minutes in length each.
- Communicating about Hospice Palliative Care
- Coping with Grief
- Building Relationships
This eLearning course gives the learner many parts of the in-person training. It allows all team members to dispel palliative care myths, learn how to recognize and accommodate the needs of those in mourning, and practice their end-of-life communication skills in three short, scenario-based modules.
About the Modules
Clicking any of the links below will open our elearning hub website.
Module 1: Communicating about Hospice Palliative Care
This module enables team members to respond in the most appropriate way to a question or comment from a resident or family member about the nature and purpose of a hospice palliative approach to care. Team members will learn how to appropriately define palliative care, recognize palliative care myths and identify communication issues that can arise in different domains of care related to illness and bereavement. Anticipated outcomes include reduced confusion and misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of palliative care from team members, residents and loved ones.
Module 2: Coping with Grief
This module enables team members to initiate conversations to assist and support residents or family members in mourning. This module also enables team members to respond in the most appropriate way to questions or comments from residents or family members about end-of-life issues. Team members will learn how to recognize the manifestations of grief, recognize the tasks that people need to complete as they grieve and recognize the needs of those in mourning. Anticipated outcomes include: improved ability to initiate and continue end-of-life conversations and increased comfort in talking about death.
Module 3: Building Relationships
This module enables team members to use paraphrasing and empathy when responding to a resident or family member in difficult and/or emotionally charged conversations about end of life issues. Team members will learn how to effectively paraphrase, how to incorporate empathy in their responses and recognize if a situation is outside the boundaries and limits of their professional role. Anticipated outcomes include: improved communication skills to build therapeutic relationships with residents and family members and an enhanced understanding of the role that all LTC team members can play in end-of-life communication.
Learn More
If you want to learn more about palliative care and communication at end-of-life take a look at the following resources:
- champlainpalliative.ca – This website has a great series of brochures on grief and bereavement support.
- dyingmatters.org – This website includes a variety of resources related to raising awareness of and promoting conversations about dying, death and bereavement.
- virtualhospice.ca – This website provides information on palliative and end-of-life care, loss and grief.
- theconversaionproject.org – This website includes resources for helping people talk about their wishes for end-of-life care
- ontariopalliativecarenetwork.ca – This website offers tools and resources to support people at the end of life.
- advancecareplanning.ca – This website offers tools and support for advanced care planning.
- chpca.net – This website has great resources about hospice palliative care approaches in Canada.
We would like to thank the people who contributed to the development of content for these modules.
- Ruth Richardson, Palliative Nurse Educator, Algonquin College
- Michelle Jones, Coordinator, Education and Staff Development, City of Toronto
- Ontario CLRI Supporting Diversity and Inclusion in Long-Term Care Advisory Group
- GEVC Inc.
