Coping with Death
10.50
CPD
Hours
10.50
RCNA
Points
Event Type:
Duration:
Cost:
Relevant To:
Seminar
Two Days
$473.00
Nurses
General Description
The aim of this program is to offer nurses an opportunity to engage in reflective practice regarding the nature of death and dying, and how this affects their professional life. A further aim is to examine myths and taboos that surround death and which may, as a result, impair the provision of high quality and appropriate patient care.
If you have identified a professional need to improve your understanding of working with death as part of your planned learning activities, then this program will offer you an opportunity to gain continuing professional development (CPD) hours related to this topic.
Need for Program
As we are a death denying society, where conversations about mortality are avoided, terminally ill patients marginalised, and grieving people isolated, health professionals need to be able to provide a “safe space” for complex conversations about death and loss to occur. Sadly, many nurses primary motivation for embarking on a health career is to “cure” people and treat disease. This can lead to some nurses feeling poorly equipped to deal with the impending death of a patient, and even avoid or refer to these patients, inappropriately. Education that addresses issues surrounding the death experience are long overdue in our health care system.
Aims and Objectives
The aim of this program is to offer nurses an opportunity to engage in reflective practice regarding the nature of death and dying in a variety of clinical settings. The program will explore the personal and professional implications for nurses of the death denying society, in which we live, and will examine the medicalisation of death and myths and taboo’s around death. In addition, a number of strategies to effect change on an individual and organisational level will be provided.
On completion of the program participants will have:
- Explored the historical evolution of death including the influence of medicine, technology, culture, values and beliefs.
- Review how death is managed in a range of clinical settings, with a particular emphasis on how a "good death" is understood, and how nurses communicate within a team to deal with death.
- Developed an understanding of a "wellness" approach to death and strategies to incorporate care and healing for dying people across a range of settings.
- Developed a specific death related project plan to implement in their workplace.
8.30am - Registration and Refreshments
9.00am - "Death Lies Dormant in All of Us and Will Bloom in Time" - Dean Koontz, "Odd Thomas"
This first session will discuss death and society, and what it means to nurses. It will explore the societal influences on how people think about death, and how different people respond to the inevitability of death. It will include:
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A historical overview of how death has been approached in Australia.
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A discussion on the influence of culture and language on how we think about death.
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An exploration of the influence of medicine:
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and the ability of surgery, pharmacology, radiology etc. to cure.
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How nurses view illness, and control over mortality.
10.00am - "Shun Death, is My Advice.' - Robert Browning, "Arcades Ambo"
Dealing with Death in Clinical Settings
This session examines health professionals and their reactions to death.
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Dealing with death in clinical settings - what happens now?
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Is there a difference in the approaches to death in various settings such as acute, primary health and aged care?
An interactive session thats explore the experiences of participants regarding how death is addressed in their health services.
10.30am - Morning Tea and Coffee
11.00am - "Our Dead are Never Dead to us Until We Have Forgotten Them." - George Eliot "Adam Bede'
This session provides an opportunity for participants to reflect on the influences of personal values, beliefs and experiences. It will include an overview of common personal, experiential and philosophical considerations about death in Australian society.
Reflective practice exercises will enable participants to understand more fully, how they respond to dying people, and their families, and the impact this has on patient care.
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Consider what underlies your opinions about who should or should not be resuscitated.
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Other examples of how personal views influence patient care
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Further focus and understand the impact these personal views have in the prolongation of life, futile treatments, forced feeding, hydration, and quality of life.
12.30pm - Lunch Break and Time to Network
1.30pm - "I've Told My Children That When I Die, to Release Balloons in The Sky to Celebrate That I Graduated. For Me, Death is a Graduation" - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
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What is meant by the term "A Good Death"?
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How to balance quality of life with patient / family expectations?
Legal and ethical implications for nurses.
2.30pm - "Some People are So Afraid to die That They Never Begin to Live.' - Henry Van Dyke
Many people are afraid of death. This includes nurses and other clinicians. This reflective session will confront some of the causes of these fears and challenge their validity.
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Identification of potential sources of fear related to death. e.g. pain, loss of dignity, loss of control.
3.00pm - Afternoon Tea And Coffee
3.30pm - Further Thoughts About Fear and Death
An exploration of issues connected with personal fears and demons, that relate to death and dying.
4.15pm - Close Of Day One Of Program
9:00am - Start of Day Two
9.00am - "To Die Will be an Awfully Big Adventure."- J.M.Barrie 'Peter Pan'
Developing a wellness approach to death is a relatively new concept. The question 'Can wellness and healing exist for dying people?' will be explored in detail.
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A look at contemporary approaches to wellness and healing utilising a holistic model.
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Learn strategies to promote healing in the absence of cure.
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Can wellness and death coexist and if so how?
10.30am - Morning Tea and Coffee
11.00am - Building Capacity to Deal with Death in Clinical Settings
- Is it possible for health care services to develop protocols, based on underlying health promotion principles, to build capacity and to deal with death in clinical settings?
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How can such protocols be implemented?
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Redefining the meaning of 'health promotion'.
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How can health promotion that encompasses death be incorporated in clinical care?
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Measuring the efficacy of health promoting initiatives for those who are terminally ill.
12.30pm - Lunch Break and Browse the Book Display
1.30pm - "Death Will Be a Great Relief. No More Interviews"- Katharine Hepburn
Talking About Death (Workshop Activity)
An interactive session that illustrates how effective principles of communication can be used to discuss the sensitive topic of death. Discussion of advanced care planning and advanced directives. Participants will have the opportunity to work in pairs and groups to explore these techniques. Following the practical exercises, a feedback session will identify areas of further development for participants
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How do you talk about death with peers, patients and families?
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How and when to discuss the concept of advanced care planning'?
3.00pm - Afternoon Tea and Coffee
3.30pm - "There are More Dead People Than Living and Their Numbers are Increasing. The Living are Getting Rarer." - Eugene Ionesco, "Rhinoceros"
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Becoming "Dead Sensible"...participants will develop a death-related project for implementation with a focus on raising awareness in their own workplace.
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Participants will work together to develop a small project plan including a scoping exercise, recruitment of a project team, implementation and evaluation strategies.
4.00 - Close of Seminar and Evaluations
Molly CarlileMolly Carlile is the “Deathtalker”. She lives her motto “The more we talk, the less we fear” by encouraging people to have informed conversations about death and grief in order to demystify and de-stigmatise these experiences. To this end Molly has embraced the arts as a vehicle for creating a safe space for these conversations to occur and as a result has become a regular media commentator, author and playwrite in addition to maintaining her senior management role in the healthcare sector.
A published author, her first book, “Jelly Bean’s Secret”, published in 2005 has been used widely as a tool for introducing the concept of death and grief to children and her new book, “Sometimes Life Sucks” published in August 2010, addresses the complex needs of young adults when experiencing death and loss. Molly regularly speaks about death and dying issues in the community, in the media and in the health and education sectors, recently appearing on Channel 10’s “The Circle”, Radio National and on the Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on 774 ABC Melbourne. The play she wrote with celebrated Australian author and playwright, Alan Hopgood “Four Funerals in One Day” explores these issues and continues to tour to great public acclaim. Their new play “The Empty Chair” is being launched early in 2012.
Molly’s passion for informing and empowering the community has grown from her extensive clinical, management and leadership career in the health sector, specialising in the care of dying and grieving people and the education of health professionals to provide best practice palliative care and grief support. Molly is Manager of Palliative Care Services at Austin Health and is on a number of Department of Health and peak body advisory groups including the International Working Group on Grief and Loss..
Molly has spoken at over 60 national and international conferences. She was the recipient of a 2008 Churchill Fellowship and was recently awarded the inaugural Arts and Health Australia Award for Health Promotion. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing Australia, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and Associate Fellow of the Australian College of Health Service Managers.
