Last Days of Life (PDQ) (2 credit hours)
Program Summary: This course explores care considerations for the last days of life and includes a discussion of forgoing potentially life saving treatments, withdrawing care, palliative sedation, requests for a hastened death, and no further escalation of care. Ethical principles and dilemmas are identified including patient autonomy, clinician perceived futility, and the principle of double effect. This course is intended as a resource to help clinicians provide the highest quality end of life care. Grief, bereavement, and challenges to the professional caregiver are also explored.
This course is recommended for social workers and appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice. This course is not recommended for NBCC ethics credit.
Publisher: The National Cancer Institute
Course Objectives: To enhance professional practice, values, skills, and knowledge by identifying key issues related to end of life care considerations and decision-making.
Learning Objectives: Identify care decisions in the final weeks, days, and hours of life. Describe the ethical principles of patient autonomy and double effect. Describe when an ethics consult may be necessary. Identify criteria to consider when deliberating the possibility of forgoing a potential life saving treatment. Describe strategies for preventing further escalation of care.
Review our pre-reading study guide.
Free State Social Work, LLC, provider #1235, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 9/6/2021 - 9/6/2024. Social workers completing this course receive 2 continuing education credits.
Free State Social Work has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP NO. 6605. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Free State Social Work is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
G.M. Rydberg-Cox, MSW, LSCSW is the Continuing Education Director at Free State Social Work and responsible for the development of this course. She received her Masters of Social Work in 1996 from the Jane Addams School of Social Work at the University of Illinois-Chicago and she has over 20 years of experience. She has lived and worked as a social worker in Chicago, Boston, and Kansas City. She currently practices in the area of hospital/medical social work. The reading materials for this course were developed by another organization.