Online End of Life Doula Course
Just like birth doulas support the beginning of life, death doulas support the end. This is a journey for both the person dying and their family, and a death doula provides the help needed to navigate this final path.
A death doula provides emotional, spiritual and physical support and works in conjunction with other services such as hospice and medical professionals. Having someone to lean on during a part of our lives that is still fairly unknown is a hugely valuable resource.
Course Outline
Welcome: Getting Started
• How to use the course
• A message from Erin & Elizabeth
Module 1: Becoming a Compassionate Presence
• Becoming a Compassionate Presence
• Videos
• Compassionate Community Care Model
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 2: Companioning the Dying
• Inclusive care
• Companioning the dying
• The burden of family caregiving
• The dying experience
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 3: End of Life Choices
• Care Pathways: Palliative care and hospice
• Systems of Care
• Inclusive care
• End-of-life and After-death options
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 4: Doula Skills and Scope of Practice
• For who do we show up, and how?
• Supporting the grief experience
• Professional service to a dying person
• Inclusive care
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 5: Expanding your Skill Set
• Community Survey
• Expanding your skillset
• Inclusive care
• Relevant resources
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 6: Self-Sustainability
• Readings and resources
• Schedule an X-Day
• Self Sustainability
• Key takeaways
Module 7: Planning for Care
• Advance Directive
• Video documentary and workshop recording
• Readings
• Your personal planning experience
• Key takeaways
• Deeper dive resources
Module 8: Building a Practice
• Summing it up
• Readings
• Structuring your practice
• Course evaluation
• Further resources
Equitable and compassionate end of life care is a human right. Learn how to provide non-medical, thoughtful support to individuals and families facing serious and terminal illness. We all have a part to play in supporting our neighbours, family and friends in the last stage of life. Be the compassionate bedside presence that you’d wish for your own family.
The art of dying well carries universal qualities that transcend our differences and are true for ALL people. As end-of-life doulas your role is to honour and celebrate the dying rites of every culture and tradition. Meet your clients where they are, exactly as they are.
Course Creators:
Erin is a Certified Hospice and Palliative Care Nurse with 15 years of nursing experience in hospice and adult and paediatric oncology. Trained as an End-of-Life Doula, her heart’s work is in end-of-life care. Erin is the Vice-Chair of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s End-of-Life Doula Advisory Council. She empowers families to be present with their loved ones in the final stage of life, however long that may be, and believes that by talking about and planning for death with our loved ones, we can ease much of the suffering that arises at the end of life.
Elizabeth trained as an experiential educator and has been an End-of-Life Doula for more than 10 years. Her personal and profound confrontation with loss opened a genuine curiosity around the power of death and sorrow in our individual lives. With a Master's degree in Community and Urban Planning, she has travelled the globe as an educator and facilitator, awakening her fascination of the cultural and social contexts which shape human understanding of the mysteries of life and death. One of her formative experiences included working as a volunteer at Kalighat, a Kolkata-based hospice for the sick, destitute and the dying established by Mother Teresa.