COURSE INFORMATION
This CE course provides comprehensive instruction on Understanding Palliative Care and Caring for the Whole Person and His or Her family. Students will study the interpersonal communication and collaboration required of a palliative care team. Students will also discuss topics to holistically treat the family and patient as one care unit. These topics include, but are not limited to: ethics, culture, spirituality, intimacy, and bereavement. This course provides the foundation for palliative care nursing and is a prerequisite for PC 520 Palliative Care: Quality Care at the End of Life II which will build upon the information presented in this course.
Course Code: PC 510. Contact hours of education: 45.
Instructor/Course Author: Amy McMillan MSN, RN, CHPN, CNE
Masters of Science in Nursing Education, Registered Nurse, Certified Hospice and Palliative Care Nurse, Certified Nurse Educator
Amy has been a Registered Nurse for over 15 years with experience in mental health, neurology, home care, as well as hospice and palliative care. She is a member of the Hospice and Palliative Care Credentialing Situational Judgement Exercise Committee. This committee constructs realistic palliative and hospice scenarios for nurses working on their hospice and palliative care nursing certification. She also regularly volunteers for the National Council of State Boards of Nursing by writing, editing, and fact checking new questions for the NCLEX – RN and NCLEX – PN exams. She has written educational material including webinars, lectures, patient simulations, and exam items on end of life care and case management. She has taught at the associate’s and bachelor’s degree levels of nursing education in the classroom, in the clinical setting, and online. She continues to work with hospice and palliative care patients and their families in a home care setting. She also contracts for authoring nursing educational material, including this course.
Link to Resume: access here
TEXTBOOK: There is one (1) required textbook for this course.
Palliative Care Nursing: Quality Care to the End of Life (5th Edition), Edited by: Marianne Matzo and Deborah Witt Sherman
Link to Purchase on Amazon.com: click here
RECOMMENDED READING:
Death, Society, and Human Experience (13th Edition), by Robert Kastenbaum, Christopher M. Moreman
Link to Purchase on Amazon.com: click here
TIME FRAME: You are allotted two years from the date of enrollment, to complete all of the four (4) courses in the Grief Support Group Certified Specialist continuing education program. There are no set time-frames, other than the two year allotted time. If you do not complete the courses within the two-year time-frame, you will be removed from the course and an “incomplete” will be recorded for you in our records. Also, if you would like to complete the courses after this two-year expiration time, you would need to register and pay the course tuition fee again.
GRADING: You must achieve a passing score of at least 70% to complete this course and receive the 35 hours of awarded continuing education credit. There are no letter grades assigned. You will receive notice of your total % score. Those who score below the minimum of 70% will be contacted by the American Academy of Grief Counseling and options for completing additional course work to achieve a passing score, will be presented.
BOARD APPROVALS: The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is an Approved Provider for Continuing Education by the South Carolina Professional Counselors, Marriage & Family Therapists and Psycho-Educational Specialists licensing board, Provider # 4637.
AIHCP is an approved provider of continuing education by the American Institute of Health Care Professionals (The Provider) is approved by the California Board of Registered Nurses, Provider number # CEP 15595 for 35 Contact Hours. Access information
This course, which is approved by the Florida State Board Of Nursing (CE Provider # 50-11975) also has the following Board of Nursing Approvals, for 35 contact hours of CE
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is a Rule Approved Provider of Continuing Education by the Arkansas Board of Nursing. CE Provider # 50-11975.
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is a Rule Approved Provider of Continuing Education by the Georgia Board of Nursing. CE Provider # 50-11975.
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is a Rule Approved Provider of Continuing Education by the South Carolina Board of Nursing. CE Provider # 50-11975.
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is a Rule Approved Provider of Continuing Education by the West Virginia Board of Examiners for Professional Registered Nurses. CE Provider # 50-11975.
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals Inc: is a Rule Approved Provider of Continuing Education by the New Mexico Board of Nursing. CE Provider # 50-11975.
Course Refund & AIHCP Policies: access here
ONLINE CLASSROOM RESOURCES AND TOOLS
* Examination Access: there is link to take you right to the online examination program where you can print out your examination and work with it. All examinations are formatted as “open book” tests. When you are ready, you can access the exam program at anytime and click in your responses to the questions. Full information is provided in the online classrooms.
* Student Resource Center: there is a link for access to a web page “Student Resource Center.” The Resource Center provides for easy access to all of our policies/procedures and additional information regarding applying for certification. We also have many links to many outside reference sites, such as online libraries that you may freely access.
* Online Evaluation: there is a link in the classroom where you may access the course evaluation. All students completing a course, must, without exception, complete the course evaluation.
* Faculty Access Information: you will have access to your instructor’s online resume/biography, as well as your instructor’s specific contact information.
* Additional Learning Materials: some faculty have prepared additional “readings” and /or brief lecture notes to enhance your experience. All of these are available in the online classrooms.
COURSE OBJECTIVES: Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
- Discuss how palliative care focuses on both the patient and their family
- Explain the similarities and differences between hospice care and palliative care
- Understand how end of life care is coordinated between a team of professionals and attends to a patient and their families physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs
- Describe how the steps of the nursing process (Assessment, Diagnosis, Planning, Implementation, Evaluation) apply to end of life care
- Explain the continuum of care between palliative care and hospice care.
- Understand how early intervention by palliative care decreases patients’ health care costs and number of hospital days required.
- Discuss the WHO recommendation that palliative care should be considered a basic human right, and who improved palliative care education and access are needed around the world.
- Describe the roles of each member of an interprofessional palliative care team in improvement of patient outcomes.
- Explain the difference between “multidisciplinary” and “interdisciplinary” care.
- Discuss the ethical principles that are significant to nursing practice, and what they mean for patient care.
- Understand the purpose and importance of advance directives.
- Understand the ethics of withdrawing or withholding life prolonging care
- Define moral uncertainty, moral residue and moral distress as related to nursing end of life care
- Understand how personal values can affect end of life care.
- Examine questions that arise when discussing end of life care and the purpose of an Advanced Directive
- Compare the ethical implications between “letting someone die” and “assistance in dying”
- Define “medical aid in dying” , “voluntarily stopping eating and drinking” and how they differ from euthanasia and suicide
- Explain the difference in ethical arguments between adult and child end of life patients.
- Explain the difficulty of legally determining if a person is dead.
- Define DNR, Advanced Directive, and Durable Power of Attorney and explain how they relate to end of life care.
- Discuss the legal and ethical issues that surround decisions to prolong a person’s life through “extraordinary measures”
- Define “capacity”, “competence”, “consent” and “ascent” as they apply to end of life care.
- Provide examples of futile care for patients at the end of life
- Describe how a patient’s culture and spirituality can affect their end of life decisions.
- Provide examples of culturally influenced care decisions that may be made by African American patients and families.
- Provide examples of culturally influenced care decisions that may be made by Chinese patients and families.
- Provide examples of culturally influenced care decisions that may be made by Asian Indian patients and families.
- Provide examples of culturally influenced care decisions that may be made by Latino and Hispanic patients and families.
- Provide examples of culturally influenced care decisions that may be made by Native American patients and families.
- List and define the four components of cultural competence
- Discuss spiritual care of palliative patients and list ways a nurse can provide spiritual care
- Describe religious beliefs related to death from a Jewish, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism perspective
- List the essential aspects of healthy sexuality in palliative care patients and how healthcare workers can help facilitate healthy sexuality
- Understand the difficulties that can affect family caregivers of palliative patients
- Describe ways to offer support to the patient and caregiver as a unit of care
- Discuss the multiple factors that can add to stress in a family system when caring for a patient at end of life
- Recognize that family is whoever the patient says it is, regardless of blood relationship.
- Explain the domains, constructs, and questions of a family caregiver assessment
- Describe the considerations needed when discussing bad news with patients and their family
- Review the phases of therapeutic communication and how it can apply to conversations with dying patients
- Explain DNR and what that means for patient care before death
- Discuss the nurses role in optimizing the health of a patient during palliative of end of life care
- Explain what is meant by a “good death” and some of the ways palliative care can help facilitate this
- Discuss grieving throughout the lifespan including cultural and ethnicity influences.
- Understand the importance of a nurse examining their own experiences with grief and becoming comfortable with death and dying.
- Define complicated grief and give examples of its cause
- Define holistic care and provide some examples a patient on palliative care might benefit from
- Explain the difference between “healing” and “curing”