Grief Ethical Considerations in Naturopathic Practice

Naturopathic Doctors deal with many grey areas of medicine in supporting chronic illness and the challenges being in a supportive role. One of those areas is mental health support, of which lifestyle counselling is a key component to practice.

With the advent of the pandemic, naturopathic doctors are playing key roles in supporting healing from loss including primary and secondary losses from COVID-19, changes in lifestyle including job, relationship, financial and social losses that have come from this period of time.

Grief has many different sources and definitions, but often when health care professionals feel unequipped to handle difficult conversations, referral is leaned on as the main option. With wait times and a burdened health care system, this may not be achievable nor possible. So what are the ways that we can safely and ethically support these conversations in the scope of naturopathic practice? Join us and learn the many basics of grief support you will be doing, and what conversations you can guide that are rewarding and healing for you and your patients.

Learning Objectives

·         Standards of care for different types of grief

·         Informed consent in grief education and choices

·         Creating compassionate self-agency in patients surrounding grief

·         Facilitating difficult conversations - reasonable expectations and guidelines

·         Ritual, spirituality, and creativity for grief work - ethically sound and professionally necessary

·         Knowing when to refer to grief professionals and whom to refer