Join us on a brief tour of the revised Workbook and Instructor’s Guide, learn what makes them unique educational tools, and how students and educators benefit when using them.

Are these resources different?

We don’t want to brag, but we feel it is important to understand how the resources from Life and Death Matters are different. Different in a good way.

Workbook—Our approach to the Workbook has always been thoroughly unique, departing from the traditional workbook model that asks you to repeat content in an endless number of definition and concept questions.

The Workbook explores topics under three major headings. First, students explore their barriers to learning under “Understanding your Beliefs” (responses are not graded). Then, under “Solidifying Concepts,” they answer definitions and concept questions on the topic. Finally, under “Integrating into Practice,” students combine their personal beliefs and knowledge to apply new skills for developing their practice.

Instructor’s Guide—The Instructor’s Guide is the ultimate teaching companion for educators. It has everything they need to teach palliative care, including lesson plans, video and audio resources, customizable teaching presentations, and correlations to current competencies. We’re certain that no other publisher offers this level of resources and support for educators.

Three areas of focus for revisions

The revisions were guided by feedback from educators and students, the publishing of new palliative care content, and changes in the educational landscape. Here’s where we focused.

• Updating content—in the Instructor’s Guide and the Workbook to reflect changes in palliative care content. For example, lesson plans, workbook questions and activities were revised to align with the newly published Canadian palliative care competencies for PSWS, and new Vocational Learning Outcomes (Ontario).
  
• Adding flexible options for online students—The urgent need for flexibility in education borne in the pandemic continues. One way to meet the need is through online classes that provide educational options for individuals who might not otherwise be able to access education.
  To meet the need of students working online, we amended selected questions to provide them more flexibility to complete questions individually or as originally written, in group discussions or presentations.

• Reducing grading workload—Educators-we heard your feedback stating that marking the workbook was a burden. We addressed this concern by amending workbook questions and the marking rubric in ways that reduce the marking workload. We’re confident that these changes will free up time!

What will students and educators get from the revised resources?

Using the revised Workbook, students can address their barriers to learning through reflective practice, develop their knowledge, and learn communications skills for discussing palliative care practices collaboratively with colleagues. These practical and essential skills are valuable for PSWs. By building their reflective practice, PSWs will be better supported throughout their caregiving career, while developing communication skills around palliative care will enhance their daily practice and enable them to become full and valued members of the healthcare team.

Students also benefit from the increased flexibility in questions that encourages individual or group collaborations. Knowing that completing the workbook helps them to meet the new competencies is a bonus for every learner.

For educators, the reduced workload of grading the workbook will be helpful. Knowing that students are led to fully explore palliative care topics and apply that knowledge in discussions opens options for more engaging classroom interactions.

When educators follow the Instructor’s Guide, they can be certain their teaching supports students to meet the current palliative care competencies. The Instructor’s Guide provides alignment between text and workbook content and the Canadian palliative care competencies and the Ontario VLOs. They have a lesson plan that they can customize to their college.

What’s next?

These resources developed out of a passion to provide excellent palliative and end-of-life care. They were built with the desire to provide PSWs with engaging resources when learning to integrate a palliative approach combined with the practicality of supporting educators with comprehensive, customizable “out-of-the-box” teaching resources.

We hope that the revisions to the workbook and Instructor’s Guide will bring PSWs another step closer to ensuring that any person with a life-limiting illness will have the opportunity to be fully supported in their journey.