Nursing Professionals   

Effective communication is a cornerstone of quality palliative care. Communicating effectively with children, teens, and young adults with serious illness, and their families, requires a skilled approach that is attuned to the patient’s developmental age and stage. This course explores topics central to communicating with young patients and their families, including clarifying goals and values to facilitate decision making, responding to families that wish to limit information to young patients, and managing conflict.

The progressive illness or impending death of an infant, child, teen, or young adult can cause profound grief in the patient as well as the family. This course focuses on some of the most difficult emotional and spiritual aspects of caring for young patients at the end of life, including transference and countertransference, trauma-informed care, types of grief, caring for diverse families, and empowering patients and families in end-of-life decision making.

This course explores the key clinical features of rare complex conditions seen in pediatric hospice and palliative care. Learn how you can help parents advocate for their child while recognizing the limits of medical interventions, and identifying medical and psychosocial resources for families of children with rare/complicated diagnoses.

Assessing and managing pain is a fundamental part of high quality palliative care. There are important differences to consider when caring for infants, children, teens, or young adults. This self-paced course delivers robust clinical skills aimed at effectively assessing and managing physical pain and understanding psychosocial factors that can impact physical suffering in seriously ill or terminally ill infants, children, teens, and young adults

Hospice and palliative care professionals work with many types of families in crisis and grief. Yet, even experienced clinicians may feel anxious when delivering care to infants, children, teens, or young adults. This course describes the challenges and joys of communicating with pediatric patients and their families, demonstrates how evidence-based communication tools can be applied in those populations, and reinforces how genuine communication is key in adult and pediatric hospice and palliative care.

The progressive illness and/or impending death of an infant, child, teen, or young adult can cause profound grief in the patient as well as the family. This course focuses on supporting those who are grieving and explores the importance of creating legacy so children and adolescents living with life-threatening illnesses know they will be remembered.

Many children, teens, and young adults with serious or life-limiting illness have been using medical devices since birth. Some pediatric patients may outgrow the need for such devices, while others will remain dependent on them throughout their lives. This course examines the use of medical technology such as feeding tubes, central lines, and respiratory devices in young patients with serious illness. It covers how to maintain these devices, and how to support patients and families in device management.

The progressive illness or impending death of an infant, child, teen, or young adult can cause profound grief in the patient as well as the family. This self-paced online course prepares hospice and palliative care professionals to recognize and address the emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual suffering of children, teens, and young adults nearing the end of life and their families.

This self-paced course takes a deep dive into the differences between palliative care and hospice, and how they differ for adults and children. It reviews concurrent care for children, including how to identify patients who are eligible, exploring a wide range of pediatric diagnoses, common medical devices used in children with serious illness, and important elements of care coordination.

Assessing and managing pain in seriously ill infants, children, teens, or young adults is integral to high quality pediatric palliative care. This 7-hour course highlights key considerations and effective clinical strategies needed to address the physical symptoms of advanced illness in young patients, including patients with medically complex conditions.

Pediatric palliative care differs from palliative care for adults, especially as the end of life approaches. These differences affect not only patients and families, but the hospice and palliative care professionals delivering care. This course introduces you to the challenges, benefits, and value of pediatric palliative care and offers a starting point for building skills to effectively support infants, children, teens, or young adults with serious illness, and their families

Ethics play an important role in all areas of healthcare and can present unique challenges in pediatric palliative care where healthcare decision-making and family dynamics may be more complex. These factors, and the emotional toll of caring for a child experiencing life-limiting illness, can lead to ethical dilemmas and cause moral distress. This course examines the complex ethical concerns that hospice and palliative care professionals may encounter and delivers important strategies to build

Interdisciplinary teams are the cornerstone of palliative care, but can be vulnerable to challenges that arise when patients experience intense suffering caused by serious or life-limiting illness. Those issues can be heightened when the patient is a child, creating fear of conflict and team dysfunction. This course delivers the knowledge, tools, and resources to empower hospice and palliative care teams to create a culture of collaboration and support in which all members can thrive in their work.

For nurses working in hospice and palliative care or another care setting, this course provides you with the tools you need to better support patients and caregivers. Explore trajectories of common diseases and build expert skills in pain and symptom management, addressing emotional suffering, and caring for patients at the end of life.

Students enrolling in this course should be an RN or BSN.  

Required Course Textbooks

• Oxford Textbook Link: Ferrell, B. R., & Paice, J. (2019). Oxford textbook of palliative nursing (5th ed.). Oxford University Press 
• NCHPC (National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care). (2018). Clinical guidelines for quality palliative care (4th). (Full text edition online)

Cancellations may be made in writing up to the day before the first day of the course; a refund will be issued minus an administrative fee of $35. No refunds are possible for withdrawals once the course starts.  

With the aging population and a shortage of palliative care practitioners, there has never been a more critical time for advanced practice nurses (APRNs) to expand their skill set and play a key role in this area. The presence of more APRNs in diverse care settings helps to expand access to palliative care to those who most need it. This fully online course offers a foundational understanding of palliative care including how to assess the need for palliative care, conducting an advance care planning discussion, and delivering difficult news. Start at any time and learn on your schedule.

Palliative care is specialized care, an extra level of support, for people with serious or chronic illnesses. Appropriate from diagnosis onward, it focuses on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness, going hand-in-hand with curative treatment and improving quality of life for both the patient and their family. Learn the fundamentals of palliative care, along with many tools that nurses can use to improve care delivery.