Preparing Paramedics: Palliative Care - Cheryl Cameron Tyne Lunn

Paramedics receive little education on grief and bereavement. As
paramedicine integrates palliative approaches to care, it has
become very apparent paramedics are under-prepared for the
crucial role they play in supporting patients and families in
grief and recognizing and responding to their own grief
reactions.


In this episode we talk to Cheryl Cameron and Tyne Lunn about how
paramedicine is evolving to include the provision of palliative
care. We start by defining palliative care and talk about how
paramedics are well positioned to support patients with
palliative care needs, already seeing this patient population in
our routine 911 caseload, but needs to do better to align the
care we provide with people’s wishes.


·      MyGriefToolbox as one strategy
and tool to address gaps in education/supports for paramedics


·      Scale and spread of this approach
across Canada


·      Importance of person, family and
caregiver centered approach


·      Psychosocial support, system
navigation, and compassion can be provided by all levels of
paramedics


·      De-bunking some myths about
providing palliative care


They’ll introduce us to MyGriefToolbox, a set of free resources
that have been developed in collaboration with Canadian Virtual
Hospice to support paramedics as we provide a palliative care
approach and psychosocial support to grieving individuals,
families, and caregivers.