I'd love to hear from you! Send me a text message. What could end-of-life care look like if healthcare professionals and death doulas worked together? In this episode of Comforting Closure - Conversations with a Death Doula, Traci Arieli talks with returning guest Kacie Gikonyo, RN, death doula, author, educator, and founder of Death Doula School, about the gaps that still exist between healthcare and death care. Doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains, hospice professionals, and death doulas all have important roles to play. But many healthcare professionals receive very little education about death, dying, and grief. At the same time, heavy caseloads, documentation requirements, and limited time can make it difficult to have the conversations patients and families need. Traci and Kacie discuss what can happen when those conversations are delayed, including families feeling unprepared for death and patients undergoing treatments without fully considering how those choices may affect their quality of life. They also talk about how death doulas can complement healthcare teams by providing additional time, education, emotional support, and presence for patients and families. In this conversation: • Why healthcare professionals need more education about death, dying, and grief • Why quality of life needs to be part of medical decision-making • What families may experience during the active dying process • What Kacie means by “laboring out of life” • How death doulas can work alongside hospice, social workers, chaplains, nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals • Why death doulas should complement healthcare rather than replace existing professionals • How better collaboration could create more human-centered end-of-life care Kacie also shares the purpose behind the LaborOut Conference, an in-person gathering bringing death doulas, caregivers, healthcare professionals, educators, and other end-of-life professionals together to learn, connect, and strengthen end-of-life care. Whether you work in healthcare or death care, are caring for someone you love, or simply want to better understand what happens at the end of life, this conversation offers a different way to think about how we care for people as they approach death. Links/Resources • Guest: Kacie Gikonyo, Death Doula Kacie - https://deathdoulakacie.com/ • LaborOut Conference - https://deathdoulakacie.com/laborout • Laboring Out of Life by Kacie Gikonyo https://deathdoulakacie.com/ • Host: Traci Arieli, Comforting Closure - https://www.comfortingclosure.com If this conversation helped you think differently about death, healthcare, or end-of-life care, please like, share, comment, and subscribe to Comforting Closure: Conversations with a Death Doula. Sharing these conversations helps make death, dying, and grief easier to talk about. #DeathDoula #EndOfLifeDoula #EndOfLifeCare #DeathCare #DeathLiteracy #HospiceCare #PalliativeCare #Healthcare #GriefSupport #DeathAndDying
