This webinar explores complicated grief that will likely emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Coronavirus pandemic brings in its wake not only pervasive threats to human life and financial security, but also a tsunami of anxiety and grief over countless losses, both intangible and concrete. This presentation summarizes the psychological toll of the pandemic, focusing on its assault on familiar and taken-for-granted meanings on which we previously relied to understand ourselves, our world, and our future. In particular we will focus on the implications of COVID-19 for bereavement care for survivors of both viral and non-viral losses in this era, and sketch the implications for healing interventions at the end of life and in dealing with the unfinished business mourners’ face in its aftermath. 

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
At the conclusion of this webinar, participants will be able to:
1. Define complicated grief and describe risk factors that might contribute to prolonged grief disorder or other forms of complicated grief reactions;
2. Describe two tools for assessment of COVID anxiety and unresolved issues in bereavement;
3. Discuss evidence that meaning making mitigates Coronavirus anxiety;
4. Describe interventions that can be used with varied populations experiencing complicated grief reactions to COVID-19 deaths; and
5. Assess the possibility of posttraumatic growth following the pandemic. 


Click here to view the board approval list
Click here to view the full program information sheet
Click here to view or print the slides for the program

Continuing Education available through 6/24/21
Instructions for obtaining your CE certificate:
1. Go to https://educate.hospicefoundation.org (if this is your first HFA certificate, click “Create a new account”)
2. Enter the CE Code (the code is provided at the end of the program)
3. Complete the exam (you must pass at 80% or above and may retake the exam as many times as needed)
4. Choose your board category and board
5. Complete the program evaluation
6. Print your certificate

Please email educate@hospicefoundation.org if you have any questions.

Expert Panelists:

Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, MDiv, is Senior Bereavement Consultant to HFA and recipient of the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling. He serves as editor of HFA’s Living with Grief® book series and its Journeys bereavement newsletter. He is a prolific author, editor, and lecturer; past president of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC); and a member and past chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (IWG). In 2018, the IWG presented Doka with the Herman Feifel Award for outstanding achievement in thanatology. He received an award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Death Education from ADEC in 1998. Doka is an ordained Lutheran minister and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of New York. 

Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, maintains an active consulting and coaching practice, and also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition. Neimeyer has published 30 books, including Routledge’s series on Techniques of Grief Therapy, and serves as Editor of Death Studies. The author of over 500 articles and chapters and a popular workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. In recognition of his contributions, he has been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning.

Leah McDonald, MD is a current Fellow in Hospice and Palliative Medicine at Hope Health and Brown University School of Medicine in Rhode Island. She completed her residency in Emergency Medicine at NYU/Bellevue and is interested in improving primary palliative care and hospice skills provided in critical care setting and the Emergency Department.