The Evidence for Nutrition in Palliative Care

Nutrition in Palliative Care This self-paced series gives healthcare professionals an evidence-based understanding of why food is medicine, along with practical skills and strategies for using nutrition to improve health and quality of life at any stage of illness. Written by experts in nutritional science and integrative medicine, this curriculum examines how food choices can improve health, prevent disease, lower medical costs, and boost wellbeing for patients, caregivers, and others. Food choices play a critical role in helping people with serious illnesses manage their symptoms and optimize their physical, mental, and emotional well-being.

Course Information STARTS: Anytime LOCATION: Online COST: $69 CE CREDITS: 3 Hours

This 3-hour online course explores nutritional therapies in palliative care, including supportive nutrition. It gives healthcare professionals practical strategies to help patients and families address nutritional concerns, slow disease progression, and use healthy food choices to regain a sense of power over their lives.

This self-paced online course combines an overview of essential nutrition concepts with evidence-based guidance on nutritional therapy and support in palliative care. It explores the role of diet and lifestyle in optimizing disease prevention and treatment, and helps you guide patients.

What You’ll Learn

Nutrition is critical to high quality palliative care and can help address symptoms such as loss of appetite, gastrointestinal problems, inflammation, anxiety and depression. This interactive self-paced course gives healthcare professionals a deeper understanding of supportive nutrition. It provides tools for assessing nutritional status in patients with chronic disease, nutritional therapies that target specific symptoms, and more.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Apply a whole-person model of care using principles of integrative medicine
• Use motivational interviewing techniques to support behavioral change
• Describe how eating behaviors and lifestyle dynamics impact health
• Differentiate nutritional screening from nutritional assessment
• Identify the underlying dynamics of food-drug interactions
• Understand how nutrition affects common symptoms of serious illness
• Define the role of the gut-brain axis in mental health issues
• List the basic principles of the MEND protocol to treat cognitive decline

Enroll in the Food Is Medicine series for $99. Learn more.

What You’ll Earn

3 continuing education (CE) credits approved by the following accreditation bodies:

CEs are provided through California State University San Marcos, accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC). The Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialists℠, the certifying board of the American Nutrition Association (ANA), designates this activity for a maximum of 3 continuing education credits for the Certified Nutrition Specialist®.

 

Strategic Partners

This curriculum was developed by experts in nutritional science, palliative care, and integrative medicine, with support from The Westreich Foundation.

Course Authors

Jennifer Breen, MPH, MEd, is a chef, consultant, and educator who teaches culinary nutrition for undergraduate and graduate healthcare professionals at the University of Minnesota. She also serves on the faculty at the Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing.

Kate Shafto, MD, FACP, FAAP, is a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Integrative Medicine who works at the University of Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare. She is a course director in the Medical School, and her clinical work is in Integrative and Lifestyle Medicine at Hennepin Healthcare in the area of Pain Management.

Susan Montgomery, RN, BSN, MA, is an expert in palliative care nursing who has cared for infants and children in the neonatal ICU, the pediatric ICU, and as a pediatric hospice nurse, as well as for adults in critical care and hospice.