Palliative Care Always Capstone Course (Coursera)

Course 5 of 5 in the Palliative Care Always Specialization.

What You Will Learn

• Explain the scope of palliative care in comprehensive care for patients and families to a variety of audiences.
• Outline ways to manage stress and nurture one's physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing in a care plan.
• Provide coping mechanisms or other methods to support patients and families.
• Practice demonstrating empathy and compassion via a virtual or remote communication.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Course Introduction and Overview
This module will introduce you to the exercises and projects you will be creating over the next four weeks. You will also explore how your opinion of palliative care has changed over the course of this specialization.

WEEK 2
Advocating for Palliative Care
This module focuses on creative ways to help your community, workplace, or family and friends learn what palliative care is, who can benefit, and how.

WEEK 3
Promoting Self-Care and Wellness
In this module, we explore self-care and wellness. You’ve learned about compassion fatigue, burnout and caregiver burden in the previous courses, now it is time to create an action plan.

WEEK 4
Communication Skills
Now we want to get back to basics with communication skills. Covid-19 has dramatically changed the way we interact with patients, family and friends. Many people have appointments now by phone or online. Families and friend often have to support each other remotely. This new way of interacting can make non-verbal communication and demonstrating empathy more difficult. In this module, you will explore virtual ways to “put a hand on another's shoulder to show support”.

WEEK 5
Psychosocial Support for the Patient and Family
This module explores distress – emotional and psychosocial, and coping with that distress.
Final Thoughts
This module recaps the key learnings of the specialization Palliative Care Always.