A little about my background: I am a Registered Nurse with my Bachelor of Science in Nursing. I have been an RN for six years. I started as an RN in a Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (PCICU), and it was during my work on this unit I became interested in palliative care and ultimately hospice. When I decided to go back to school for my master’s degree, I decided I needed more adult experience and changed focus to an adult medical surgical unit. I was surprised to find I loved working with adults. I had heard that the Veteran’s Hospital where I live was in the process of creating an acute care hospice unit, so I changed hospitals and went to work at the Veteran’s hospital and it has been an honor to take care of America’s heroes, our veterans. I ultimately decided to apply and got selected to be one of the nurses taking part in opening the new acute care hospice unit. I first discovered Katie Duncan when I read her book The Dying Process. I fell in love with her book and would highly recommend reading it! I just had to take part in this Certified End of Life Practitioner course by Death Care Coach with Katie Duncan when I heard about it, and I am so glad I did!

What ultimately motivated me to pursue training as an End-of-Life Practitioner was as stated previously, working in the PCICU being around parents and families that were on the verge of and unfortunately who at times lost their baby, child, or teenager. Seeing what some of these families were going through and what was happening with one baby in particular until she was finally removed from life support and allowed to die had me wanting to learn more about the dying process and how to explain this process in order to better assist families during their loved one’s death journey so another patient or dying person would not go through what that family and baby went through.

While I am a nurse, the death and dying process just is not really taught in nursing school. So, while I may have had some general knowledge about death, I did not have the full knowledge nor understanding about what happens when a person is dying, such as the physical and psychosocial changes. Therefore, I did not fully have the knowledge or understanding to confidently explain hardly anything when it comes to the dying process. Before this course I could not have really told families or the dying person what changes they would be seeing, noticing, or feeling. I have seen a person during the dying process, saw the breathing changes, but could not identify what I was seeing. After taking this course I now know what it was I was seeing and can identify what was happening with their breathing and why.

Thanks to this course I can now confidently explain to patients and their family/caregivers about the signs of the dying process that they will experience/witness. I am better able to explain what the medications are and what they are used for throughout the dying process. I also now have the knowledge about all the different aspects of preparations for death, such as completing an Advanced Directive/Living Will and funeral, burial or cremation arrangements, and all the various things that will need to be done once the patient dies, such as notifying different creditors, bill agencies, banks, etc. I also now have materials I can give to the families/caregivers that detail all the steps after the patient’s death and resources that can help the families/caregivers complete the “to-do” list for preparations and for after death. I also have references I can give families/caregivers to help them through the emotional aspects of going through the dying process with their loved one. I also feel I am better able to support the patient and their family/caregiver as well in many ways.

I feel this course distinguishes itself by how active the instructor, Katie Duncan, is with it. Not only that, but the course is very easy to understand and follow. It also gets the learner involved so he/she learns everything a patient and their family/caregiver goes through during the entirety of the hospice journey. It also gets the learner engaged with the learning through the coursework with assignments such as a workbook for creating an advanced directive with a link to be able to access state accepted ones and creating a death plan (how you would want your death to look like), etc.

I would recommend this specific training course because of reasons stated previously and so many more that would take way too long to list. I would tell someone who was hesitating about this program to go for it and that I do not believe they could find a better program that would teach them as much about death and dying and prepare them to be an end-of-life practitioner/death doula/death coach than this program right here. I would also tell them how much knowledge I gained from this course and how because of this course I truly feel confident in working in hospice now and how I would be confident being an end-of-live practitioner.

The course content supported my learning through the layout, being easy to understand, and by getting me involved in the learning process. The instructor, Katie Duncan, supported my learning by creating this course the way she did, by always being an email away to answer any questions I may have had and clarify any confusion, as well as having a place to get all students connected via a Facebook ground just for this course. The instructor will take the time to meet with students individually if requested and for me that made a huge difference in my learning.

I have seen personal growth in myself in many ways because of this course. I have gained so much knowledge about death and dying that I feel confident in speaking about it to my coworkers and my nursing educator. I can answer almost every question my educator asks me about different aspects of death and dying. I feel more confident about identifying the signs and symptoms I witness in patients who are dying and can explain those signs now. I feel a lot more comfortable becoming a hospice nurse now that I have gained so much knowledge because of this program. I have recently had the opportunity to shadow another nurse in a hospice unit and because of this course I have been able to identify and explain end-of-life skin changes, breathing changes, urinary symptoms and interventions that are in place and why.

Now that I have completed this course, I see it helping me to help patients die peacefully and with dignity. I see myself being able to have those difficult end-of-life conversations with patients and their families/caregivers and to be there to support them through the entire process.

This is overall an amazing course. It is put together very well with all the videos and the coursework each week is completely relevant and matches up beautifully to what you learned in the respective week. You will learn so much from this course and every bit of information taught and learned has to do with death and dying and can really help you become a wonderful end-of-life practitioner whether you are wanting to be a death doula or like me become a Hospice nurse.