Hospice and Palliative Care for Therapists

About this Certificate Program

Rehabilitation therapies are by their very nature palliative care, not curative. The goals are to maximize function, mobility, ADL independence, communication, and quality of life. As a result of aging, disease, and medical interventions, many patients, families, and their therapists face ever-greater challenges in the more advanced stages of living with and treating such conditions. This MedBridge Certification in Hospice and Palliative Care provides the highest quality and most current education available in the field, developed from American Physical Therapy Association and National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization courses provided by national experts in this area of practice.

Target audience

This certification will benefit therapists in a wide variety of settings. The most applicable would be a therapist working for a hospice agency where advanced practice is essential for both client quality of life and organizational success. Acute care settings often have a palliative care program that needs the therapy component to provide a full spectrum of services. Skilled nursing facilities and long term care programs have many clients who would benefit from a palliative approach to therapy. Private practice and outpatient settings also see clients with progressive, non-curable conditions. Using the therapeutic approaches offered in the MedBridge Hospice and Palliative Care certification, a therapist in any of these practice areas can enhance function, safety, quality of living, and the transitional experiences through the full spectrum of a client’s life.

Goals & objectives

• Understand the role of rehabilitation therapies under the Medicare Hospice Benefit and successful strategies for team integration and program success.

• Recognize patient situations where a palliative care model is appropriate and utilize clinical practices to support function, independence, and quality of life.

• Identify hospice appropriate fall risk assessments and implement risk minimization with physical, psychosocial, and spiritual strategies.

• Recognize opportunities to provide patient and family education about disease process and end of life trajectory and closure issues.

• Integrate psychosocial and spiritual awareness into therapy practice to support patient/family end of life processes and therapist self care.

• Describe clinical features, functional measures, and palliative outcomes relevant to late and end stage neurodegenerative diseases.

• Identify strategies utilizing mindfulness techniques to decrease stress, increase self-awareness, and improve communication in a palliative care or hospice practice.

• Discuss parameter of dying including the physiologic process, trajectories, clinical prognostic measures, and signs and symptoms of approaching death.

• Identify the differences between palliative care and hospice practice in different settings and the components of patient directives.