Why should I take a course on end of life?

Re-imagining the End-Of-Life

Nurses can make a big difference in how people experience the end of their lives. Most people in our modern health care system still come unprepared into the end of life – their own, and those of their loved ones. Much of peoples’ suffering seems to come from this unfamiliarity with the journey at end of life – and their not knowing how to prepare. Preparation for the last part of our lives would ideally start long before people become hospice-appropriate. Nurses care for patients in their most vulnerable moments, from birth through death. They have the opportunity to ask open questions about what matters most to people all throughout the trajectory of illness. However, without opportunities for self-reflection, talking about end of life can be an uncomfortable conversation for most nurses and other health care professionals. This course will help you build skills and capacities for these important conversations – as well as give you a re-imagined perspective on what might be possible if we talked more openly about living and dying.