Palliative Care: Providing Psychosocial and Spiritual Support

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).

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.

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.

• 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.