Managing Grief and Loss: Nurturing the Nurse (0.25 credits)

Nurses routinely encounter grief while caring for dying patients and assisting families to deal with difficult losses.  Regardless of years of experience or level of training, nurses can experience profound distress when facing multiple and recurrent losses of patients to illnesses.

The purpose of this course is to review the impact of grief and loss on nurses and to assist nurses to recognize and become familiar with the assessment, communication and coping mechanisms when dealing with grief and loss.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. Describe the types of grief experiences and their specific impacts on nurses;
2. Apply tools for self-assessment to recognize indicators signaling difficulties in coping and managing grief and loss;
3. Plan communication strategies to facilitate coping and build a support systems to facilitate work life balance.

Course Requirements

To receive your certificate and a 0.25 credit toward your de Souza designation, you are required to complete:

1. Complete course preparation such as baseline survey and pre-reading; and post a 400 word short description of a clinical scenario on the discussion forum with the following content – "describe a case where the loss of a patient  had significant impact on the attending nurse" before the start of the course
2. Participate fully in the course
3. Submit a description at the end of the course on the discussion forum on three strategies to promote self care and a supportive environment and comment on two postings from other learners in the group
4. Complete a post course evaluation

Method of Delivery

This course is offered in two formats: either a one full-day workshop plus eLearning, or six weekly sessions of 1-hour duration each via video or teleconference plus eLearning

Time Commitment: Approximately 12.5 hours for the workshop format and 13 hours for the video-conference format

de Souza Nurse Designation: This course is worth 0.25 credits under Therapeutic and Supportive Relationships.

To register for this course, please visit the Events Calendar to find out when it is being offered.