Responding Appropriately to Grief and Loss as a Healthcare Professional or Wellness Provider

Healthcare professionals are in a unique and challenging position when it comes to supporting people with life changing and life threatening illness and death. These professionals, caregiving in the front lines,are dealing with difficult and emotional situations everyday, sometimes without the formal training on how to be supportive.

Grief is the internal and natural response to loss that human being experience, and everyone, either in their personal or professional life, will inevitably be faced with a situation of significant loss and resultant grief. Healthcare professionals are uniquely positioned to be able to offer holistic, compassionate care that is supportive across all domains of loss and grief. Unfortunately, North America is a largely death phobic and grief illiterate culture, making it challenging to know the best way to help. This two-day workshop will focus on dispelling popular misconceptions of grief, re-framing the way we think about, experience, and support loss and grief.

Learning Objectives:

• To be able to define grief and identify a variety of losses a person could experience.
• To examine the misconceptions we have in our society about grief, and to recognize the impact these misconceptions have on the bereaved.
• To learn the 11 tenants of the Companioning Model of grief support, and to practice applying it during the workshop.
• To demonstrate basic counselling and supportive skills in a small group setting.
• To appraise and support your role as a Health care professional in providing grief sensitive care, and become aware of community resources.

Click HERE for workshop program

Presenter: Sandy Ayre, OT
Sandy Ayre is an Occupational Therapist with a certificate in Death and Grief Studies through the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado. She works on the Tertiary Palliative Care Unit at the Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton supporting patients and families at the end of life. She also is a certified yoga instructor. Since 2009, Sandy has been providing yoga for grief support – a grief support group in Edmonton that uses yoga and meditation as a supportive modality. You can find her classes online as well at www.yogaforgriefsupport.com.

Please note break refreshments are included. Lunch is on your own. Certificates of completion will be emailed following the workshop.