- Easing Pain and Suffering
- Health Management
- Palliative Care
- Communication
- Patient Care
Palliative Care: It's Not Just Hospice Anymore Specialization
Palliative Care Easing Pain and Suffering. Learn strategies and techniques to assess suffering and support patients living with serious illness
Offered By


Skills you will gain
About this Specialization
Applied Learning Project
Learners will use real-world strategies, tools and techniques to assess sources of suffering and learn communication techniques that support patients living with serious illness. Authentic patient scenarios are used to allow learners to apply new knowledge and practice new skills that they can then apply and integrate into their own clinical settings.
How the Specialization Works
Take Courses
A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. When you subscribe to a course that is part of a Specialization, you’re automatically subscribed to the full Specialization. It’s okay to complete just one course — you can pause your learning or end your subscription at any time. Visit your learner dashboard to track your course enrollments and your progress.
Hands-on Project
Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate. If the Specialization includes a separate course for the hands-on project, you'll need to finish each of the other courses before you can start it.
Earn a Certificate
When you finish every course and complete the hands-on project, you'll earn a Certificate that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.

There are 5 Courses in this Specialization
What is Palliative Care?
Palliative care provides invaluable help for patients living with serious or life-limiting illness and their family caregivers. Palliative care should be part of healthcare services to improve quality of life, the ability to tolerate and benefit from treatment and improve survival. In this course, you will learn about the nature of suffering and how this concept can help you understand the experience of people living with serious illness. Next, you will learn skills to more effectively communicate with patients, families and other care providers to both understand their experiences and provide an extra layer of support. In the next module you will explore your own core values and beliefs and how they impact your work with others. Finally, you will learn how to do a whole person assessment to understand the needs of people with serious illness so you can develop a plan to support them.
Pain Management: Easing Pain in Palliative Care
In this course, you will be able to develop a systems view for assessing and managing pain in the palliative care setting. By the end of the course, you will be able to: 1) Describe the pain problem in the palliative care setting; 2) Assess a person’s pain, 3) Explain the benefits of integrative therapies and pharmacologic strategies to manage pain.
Easing Physical Symptoms: It's Not Just Hospice Anymore
Palliative care provides important support for people living with serious or life-limiting illnesses and their family caregivers. In this course, you will learn to use symptom assessment tools to better understand which symptoms are present and which are most distressing. In subsequent weeks you will learn about some of the most common and distressing symptoms such as anorexia (loss of appetite), dyspnea (shortness of breath), fatigue (weakness), delirium(confusion) and constipation and nausea/vomiting. For each of these symptoms, you will learn about the underlying cause and potential ways to support people and their families to manage the symptoms with simple practical and non-medical approaches as well as a review of medications as appropriate. In addition, you will learn to help people with their emotional response to symptoms and loss of function.
Psychosocial and Spiritual Aspects of Palliative Care
In this course, you’ll learn how serious and life-threatening illnesses often affect emotional and spiritual well-being. Illnesses can increase stress as patients and families learn to live with a “new normal” that may often focus on illness. You’ll learn how to tell when normal sadness (or grief) becomes something more serious and needs to be addressed. People with serious illnesses also have social concerns as their family, friends and community support system becomes stretched, and sometimes fails. We’ll talk about resources and skills you can use to help support patients and families. You’ll learn about advance care planning, that includes shared decision-making, setting goals of care, and writing down plans for care.
Offered by

University of Colorado System
The University of Colorado is a recognized leader in higher education on the national and global stage. We collaborate to meet the diverse needs of our students and communities. We promote innovation, encourage discovery and support the extension of knowledge in ways unique to the state of Colorado and beyond.
Frequently Asked Questions
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What is the Coursera Palliative Care Specialization: Palliative Care: It’s not Just Hospice Anymore?
What types of courses are in the Coursera Palliative Care Specialization: Palliative Care: It’s not Just Hospice Anymore?
I am a patient or I am a family member caring for someone living with serious illness. Should I take this course?
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I live outside the United States-can the Coursera Palliative Care Specialization be helpful for me?
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