This document discusses death education and society's avoidance and denial of death. It notes that death anxiety is hardwired in humans and cultures provide meaning and defense against this reality. While death was once a community experience, it is now more private and prolonged. The aims of death education are personal development and responsible social participation. It should educate those associated with dying, death and bereavement. Death education encompasses public empowerment through knowledge, professional skills development, and personal learning including self-awareness. Models may include cognitive, experiential and arts-based approaches.

1. Learning for life? – a brief look at
death education
Orla Keegan, Irish Hospice Foundation

2. Our poet
• Noli timere
• Do not be afraid.

3. Death
• Death anxiety
• Terror management
• Death avoidance
• Death denial

4. • ‘Societies are standardised systems of death
denial’ Ernest Becker
– Consciousness of death and realisation of death
underpinning all human action
– Culture gives us meaning and defence against this;
a symbolic sense we can live forever

5. Kicked the
bucket....
Pushing up daisies....
Popped their clogs

6. Komaromy, C. and Woodthorpe, K. (2011) Investigating mortuary
services in hospital settings.
• An association with death was a potential
barrier to communicating with colleagues
outside of the mortuary, as the APTs found
themselves stigmatised by what they
perceived to be and what would be called
sociologically their literal ‘embodiment’ of
medical failure. This could be isolating for the
APTs, to the point that when they went to
other hospital departments, they were treated
with caution.

7. Yalom – Staring at the sun
• Fear of death as a primary source of anxiety;
hard-wired

8. Consequences
• Psychologically defended but
– Less compassionate
– Less balanced
Man’s inhumanity to man....

9. Yalom – Staring at the sun
• Fear of death as a primary source of anxiety;
hard-wired
• ‘I feel strongly as a man who will himself die
one day... that confronting death allows us not
to open some ... Pandora’s box but to re-enter
life in a richer, more compassionate manner’
Confront death, learn about it... can be a way of
enriching our life

11. • The aim of education about death, dying, and
bereavement is to contribute to general
education as a basis for personal
development and responsible social
participation. It must also contribute to the
specific education of those who, as a result of
personal or professional circumstances, are
closely associated with dying, death, and
bereavement.

12. Traditional Modern Neo-modern
Bodily
Context
Death quick
and frequent
Death
hidden
Death
prolonged
Social
Context
Community Public vs
private
Private
becomes
public
Authority Religion Medicine Self
Walter, 1994

13. • If the tide is turning towards ‘self’ there is a
move towards sense making, meaning
making, control and this is a trend in personal
and professional life.
• One that is amenable to education and
support
– Public
– Professional
– Personal

14. • Public empowerment – knowledge,
understanding, comfort, language
• Professionals –technical and interpersonal
skills
• Personal learning

15. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-
families/features/the-death-cafe-movement-tea-and-mortality-
8082399.html

17. Community Engagement at 3rd International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference

19. Professional education
ALL
SOME
FEW

20. Competencies
(AIIHPC, HSE, IHF & IAPC, 2013)
• The Principles of Palliative Care
• Communication
• Optimizing Comfort and Quality of Life
• Care Planning and Collaborative Practice
• Loss, Grief and Bereavement
• Professional and Ethical Practice in the
context of Palliative Care

21. Personal
• Self-awareness involves both a combination of
self knowledge and development of dual-
awareness, a stance that permits the clinician
to simultaneously attend to and monitor the
needs of the patient, the work environment,
and his or her own subjective experience.
Kearney et al, Self-care of Physicians Caring for
Patients at the End of Life

22. Working with death, dying, pain
and loss
• Compassion fatigue has been described as the
“cost of caring” for others in emotional pain
• Compassion satisfaction is pleasure derived
from the work of helping others.

24. • “To cure sometimes, to relieve
often, to comfort always,”

25. Model(s) for death education...
Cognitive.... Information....
Experiential
Arts
Lifecycle
a basis for personal development and
responsible social participation.

26. Conclusion
• Death education... More than just a class
• Context for how students – and staff – are
inducted
• Context for donors’ journeys; and donors’
families’ journeys
• Context for how we approach people who are
bereaved

27. References
• International work group on death, dying and bereavement (1992)
International work group on death, dying, and bereavement: A statement
of assumptions and principles concerning education about death, dying,
and bereavement, Death Studies, 16:1, 59-65
• Becker, E (1973) The denial of death New York: Free Press
• Kearney, M. K., R. B. Weininger, et al. (2009) "Self-care of Physicians Caring
for Patients at the End of Life: "Being Connected . . . A Key to My
Survival"." JAMA 301(11): 1155-1164.
• Komaromy, C. and Woodthorpe, K. (2011) Investigating mortuary services
in hospital settings. CDAS report http://opus.bath.ac.uk/22612/
• Walter, (1994) The revival of death London; Routledge
• Yalom, Irvin D. 'Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death', The
Humanistic Psychologist, 36:3, 283 – 297

28. http://hospicefoundation.ie/the-irish-hospice-
foundation-pays-tribute-to-seamus-heaney-2/
• “I was thinking of when a tree is cut down; for a moment
it’s as if the air is shaken and there is a new space in the
world… an emptiness. So that clearances that stood open
when the spirit goes... that’s what I was thinking of.
I think that it’s very important that for the survivors, that
they are there when that clearance happens, when that
tree falls and when the moment of change is registered in
them… it’s very simple, very mysterious, nothing like it
ever happens anywhere else.”