The Palliative Approach to Care is the foundational course in de Souza Institute’s comprehensive course series Education in Palliative Care (EPC). The course series is built on the 2017 de Souza online palliative care course, iEPEC-O for Oncology.  

About the EPC Course Series 

The EPC course series consists of three seperate courses that teach a comprehensive curriculum in palliative and end-of-life care: 

• Course 01 - The Palliative Approach to Care (this course)
• Course 02 - Symptom Assessment and Management in Palliative Care
• Course 03 - End-of-Life Care, Grief, and Loss

These three courses cover a wide-range of competencies in providing person-centered care for patients living with serious illness such as cancer, end-stage renal disease (ESRD), heart failure, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Completing all three courses in the series will earn you the de Souza Certificate in Palliative and End-of-Life Care. 

Course 01 - The Palliative Approach to Care 

The Palliative Approach to Care course is divided into three sections with ten modules in total. The first course section, Serious Illness Conversations, teaches the foundational concepts key to the palliative approach to care. These first modules teach in-depth strategies for how to have difficult conversations with patients regarding prognosis, life-expectancy, goals of care, and advance care planning. The second section, Comprehensive Pain and Symptom Assessment, introduces you to pain and symptom assessment from a holistic and patient-centred approach. The third section, Person and Family-centred Palliative Care, explores working with the patient and their caregivers as the unit of care and resolving potential conflicts around care decisions.  

Although you can complete the course modules at your own pace, you must complete the course, in its entirety, within seven weeks of the course start date (this date can be found on the course information page in My Account).