End-of-life Doula
An end-of-life doula or death doula, much like a birth doula or midwife, helps to empower their patients to take control of their own dying process.
Responsibilities of a Death Doula
Death doulas are strong advocates of the right of individuals to have control over their own passing. A professional death doula is trained to provide a wide range of services, such as:
- Home-based Funerals: As more people wish to care for their dying and their dead at home, a death doula may assist with education for families and patients in transition. They can teach clients how to bathe, dress, and prepare the dead for burial, and offer alternatives to traditional embalming and cremation — green burials and home funerals are becoming increasingly popular.
- Companionship: As someone is dying, they may wish to simply have someone to talk to who is not an immediate family member. A death doula isn’t the same as a pastor or a mental health counselor; instead, they provide the gift of a listening ear, and are an objective, non-biased party who can hear the things someone wishes to share prior to dying. They may be able to offer spiritual counseling in the person’s final days, and help the dying consider their legacy to their loved ones.
- End-of-Life Planning: A death doula may assist with planning a funeral or memorial service, or even a pre-death celebration of life. They may aid in finding resources for preparing a will or power of attorney. If the individual is terminally ill, a death doula can help make arrangements for hospice care or pain management, although they are typically not medical professionals themselves; a death doula simply facilitates this care in a holistic way.
- Assisting the Family: Families can be overwhelmed by all the things there are to think about when a loved one is about to die, and a death doula can help by guiding conversations about their wishes. The death doula can also provide a bit of respite for the family by helping with caregiver tasks like bathing the dying individual or monitoring them while the family is out of the house. Making the space calm and comfortable during death, which can include readings, prayers, music or other rituals important to the person
“One of the things we concentrate on is working with the meaning of a person’s life and helping them explore it for what we call meaning-directed life review ... What kind of legacy is this person going to leave behind, which is focused on aspects of meaning as they see it in their life. How do they leave that in some way that their loved ones can continue to engage with that meaning?”