Psychosocial and Spiritual Aspects of Palliative Care

In this course, you’ll learn how serious and life-threatening illnesses often affect emotional and spiritual well-being. Illnesses can increase stress as patients and families learn to live with a “new normal” that may often focus on illness. You’ll learn how to tell when normal sadness (or grief) becomes something more serious and needs to be addressed. People with serious illnesses also have social concerns as their family, friends and community support system becomes stretched, and sometimes fails. We’ll talk about resources and skills you can use to help support patients and families. You’ll learn about advance care planning, that includes shared decision-making, setting goals of care, and writing down plans for care

• Understand emotional and spiritual impacts of serious illness
• Distinguish normal grief from complicated grief
• Learn social support strategies and available resources
• Recognize advance care planning and shared decision-making

• Basic computer and internet skills
• Ability to read instructions and complete short activities in English