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A new online course aims to help Prince Edward Island health-care providers offer end-of-life care that respects Indigenous traditions and ways of healing.
The course was developed by Pallium Canada and the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of P.E.I. in collaboration with Lennox Island and Abegweit First Nations.
Bethany MacIsaac, the confederacy’s senior health adviser, said the project is one way to address inequities in the health-care system.
“This is just one way of many that we can start to close that gap and ensure that patients feel safe and respected at all interactions with the health-care system and at all points of life,” MacIsaac said.
Community members, elders and nurses who work in palliative care helped develop the course.
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Terry LeBlanc, an elder with the Abegweit First Nation Healing Centre, said the course helps providers understand Indigenous perspectives on death and dying alongside the realities of care in hospitals and other settings.
“Sometimes hospitals or palliative-care environments were unaware of some of the cultural expectations, hopes, aspirations of family and extended family members,” he said.
“Things as simple as wanting to be proximal to our loved ones as they take their final steps in the journey.”
LeBlanc said that can include having family and friends nearby to tell stories or sing a song in recognition of how they journeyed through life in good ways.
He added that sharing memories can help a person recall their life as they approach death and carry those experiences into what he described as the next part of a spiritual journey.
“We are not simply physical beings in a physical world, but spiritual beings in both a physical and spiritual world,” he said.
LeBlanc said elders and others who have accompanied a person through life can also play an important role in their care at the end of life.
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The course is aimed at people with specialized palliative-care training, but MacIsaac said its lessons are relevant to all health-care providers and community members.
She said the course is part of broader work on the Island to address Indigenous-specific racism in health care.
LeBlanc said Abegweit First Nation is also working with UPEI’s nursing school on a separate course focused on Indigenous health, healing and well-being.
That course is being taught to third-year nursing students, and they attend sessions in the First Nation.
LeBlanc said being there helps them see the community beyond the classroom.
“They’re encountering people in the community, in the band office … seeing the life that the community leads and the various aspects of community engagement that are available to them,” he said.
“[It’s a] wonderful contextual experience that they’ll take with them into their nursing care.”