Understanding the Needs of the Dying: Bringing Hope, Comfort and Love to Life’s Final Chapter

David Kessler

Renowned End-of-Life Expert, Author Featured on “Dr. Oz”, “Oprah & Friends”, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, People Magazine, “Entertainment Tonight”, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times

David Kessler, best-selling author, collaborator with the legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and well-known expert on palliative care, hospice and end-of-life issues will provide you the newest information on death, grief and deathbed phenomena … real, tested, engaging information you will not find anywhere else.

Delve deeper into the mysteries of life and death exploring key topics

• New studies on deathbed visions, and the role they play in end-of-life care
• Tools for sensitivity and discretion for balancing wishes of the dying and family with medical, ethical and legal considerations
• Communication strategies for necessary difficult and emotion conversations
• Deeper insight on how anticipatory grief shapes end-of-life experiences
• Understand why children are often the forgotten grievers, and how to help
• Cultural differences and new sensitivity to care
• Assisted suicide

It’s guaranteed to be a day that will enhance your work as a caregiver and David will provide so much insight, tools, strategies and inspiring information, you’ll look forward to the next day at your work … so you can immediately begin to use all you have learned.

OUTLINE

Signs of Impending Death

• Preparing family for physical changes
• Interventions for coping with emotional changes in the family
• Using near death awareness as a predictor in clinical settings

Palliative Care Model

• Academic settings vs community
• Physician led vs non physician led
• Roles of physician, nurse, social worker, case manager, discharge planner, clergy
• What’s best – hospital, home health, hospice, skilled nursing facility
• Joint commission certification

Hospice

• Removing barriers
• How hospice can increase length of stay while decreasing hospital time
• Bereavement services to enhance community partnerships

Death Related Sensory Experiences (Death Bed Visions)

• Effective and ineffective models for family coping and integration
• Religion in patients’ deathbed visions
• Using the law to normalize the dying experience
• Clinical/palliative care studies, research of near death awareness

Advance Directives

• Physician order for life sustaining treatment
• Make advance directives useful and medically effective
• D.N.R. (do not resuscitate) vs. A.N.D. (allow natural death)
• Code status and impact on the grieving process

Anticipatory Grief

• Treatment strategies for hospice, palliative care and mental health care professionals
• Tools for normalizing

Helping the Dying Patient’s Children

• How the media shapes a child’s view of death
• Tools for preparing a child for loss
• Interventions for coping with funerals
• Why children are often the forgotten grievers and how to help

The Ethics Committee and End of Life

• How and when to use your ethics committee
• How and why members of the end of life team can participate
• Techniques for helping families get the most out of the ethics meetings
• Avoid the common pitfalls of ethics committees at the end of life

Hope and Miracles

• How to help families integrate desire for miracles at the end of life
• Techniques for honoring hope without fostering denial

Cultural Differences

• Affecting care of the dying
• Tools for successfully bridging the gap with healthcare providers and families

The Question of Assisted Suicide

• Understanding the current debate
• The realities of withdrawing care vs assisted suicide
• Learn techniques for addressing patient’s requests for assisted suicide within the facilities and health care provider’s beliefs system

OBJECTIVES

• Identify common needs of the dying and ways to meet across many health care settings
• Discover ways to discuss end of life issues while allowing miracles and hope
• Identify the differences and commonalities of palliative and hospice care models
• Define anticipatory grief and how it shapes the end of life experience for patients and families
• Gain tools and techniques to manage our own reactions to loss in the workplace
• Interpret and resolve conflict regarding advance directives and code status
• Describe tools to help children cope with a love one dying
• Identify common characteristics of deathbed visions and normalize them for families
• Prepare techniques for running a successful family conference
• Define how fears about pain addiction can play a role in family dynamics at the end of life
• Outline the role of spirituality and its role in the last years of life

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

David Kessler is one of the most well-known experts and lecturers on grief and loss today, reaching hundreds of thousands of people through his books, seminars and media appearances. His first book, The Needs of the Dying, received praise by Mother Teresa and has been the #1 bestselling hospice book. David also co-authored two books with the legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages and Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living. David considers it an honor and privilege to have worked so closely with Elisabeth for 10 years.

David’s work has been discussed in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Business Week and Life Magazine, and has been featured on “CNN-Cross Fire”, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, and “Entertainment Tonight”. David is a frequent guest on the Dr Oz show and a contributing writer on Oprah.com, Dr. Oz’s Sharecare.com and, “Anderson Cooper 360”. As a real life character counterpart, he did press for the Clint Eastwood/Matt Damon film, “Hereafter.” David’s work has a strong Internet and social media presence. His web site www.Grief.com is visited for help and inspiration by reaching hundreds of thousands of people in more than 167 countries.

His volunteer work includes serving as a member of the Red Cross Mental Health Disaster Team and as a Specialist Reserve Officer for the Los Angeles Police Department, on its trauma team. His hands-on training and skill takes him wherever grief happens, including trauma situations and disaster sites such as 9/11 and Ground Zero. His work recently took him to meet with Sandy Hook Elementary School parents and children.

As a modern day thanatologist, David has a master degree in Health Care Bioethics from Loyola Marymount University, he did his undergraduate work at University of Southern California and is a member of the American College of Health Care Executives. He is a certified AMA / EPEC (Education for Physicians on End of Life Care) trainer. He also is the founding chairperson for the Hospital Association of Southern California Palliative Care Committee and spent the last decade as a C-suite executive in a 650 bed – three hospital system in Los Angeles County. He also serves as a board member on the Farrah Fawcett Foundation.

He is now working on new book with the much loved author Louise Hay about the grief that follows after death, but also around grief after a relationship or marriage ends.

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Click to order the book, You Can Heal Your Heart

Click to order the book, On Grief and Grieving

Click to order the book, The Needs of the Dying

Click to order the book, Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die

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TARGET AUDIENCE

Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Case Managers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, Chaplains/Clergy and other Mental Health Professionals

ADA NEEDS

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