ABSTRACT
Palliative care for the dying can be defined as offering “comfort care”; comfort
care for both the person who is dying and their loved ones. The psycho-spiritual
side of palliative care involves offering psycho-spiritual comfort to all those
involved. To achieve this psycho-spiritual comfort, we (Doug and Conley)
suggest 5 steps a dying person can take and 5 steps the loved ones of the dying
can take. A palliative care counselor can facilitate these 10 steps, or the 10
steps can be taken independent of a facilitator. We base these 10 steps on our
experiences with terminally ill people as well as our review of palliative care
literature. We will first present two personal stories of death: my (Doug)
daughter’s death and my (Conley) father’s death, both of whom died quite
young and both experienced great physical and emotional pain in their dying.
We will then relate these two deaths to what we consider to be the 10 steps
toward psycho-spiritual comfort, citing our personal experiences with each of
the steps as we cite supporting palliative care literature.
