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

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

Faculty

David Kessler Related seminars and products: 13

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David Kessler is one of the world’s foremost experts on healing and loss. His experience with thousands of people on the edge of life and death has taught him the secrets to living a happy and fulfilled life.

He is the author of six bestselling books. His new book is Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. His first book, The Needs of the Dying, a #1 best-selling hospice book, received praise by (Saint) Mother Teresa. He co-authored two bestsellers with the legendary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: On Grief and Grieving and Life Lessons. His most newly released book is You Can Heal Your Heart: Finding Peace After Breakup, Divorce or Death with Louise Hay. He worked with Elizabeth Taylor, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Marianne Williamson when their loved ones faced life-challenging illnesses. He also worked with late actors Anthony Perkins and Michael Landon. David’s work has been discussed in the Los Angeles Times, Business Week and Life Magazine, and has been featured on “Brené Brown, CNN-Cross Fire”, NBC, Fox, PBS, “Dr. Oz” and “Entertainment Tonight”. David is a contributing writer on Oprah.com, Dr. Oz’s Sharecare.com, “Anderson Cooper 360” and “The Huffington Post”.

David has a master’s 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) 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.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: David Kessler receives compensation as Vice President of Patient Support Services for Citrus Valley Health Partners. He is an author for Simon & Schuster – New York and receives royalties. Mr. Kessler receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.
Nonfinancial: David Kessler has no relevant nonfinancial relationship to disclose.