Are you ready to answer the call to serve those in the final chapter of their lives? Do you have the compassion and dedication it takes to support families and individuals through the dying process?
If you’re looking to become a certified death doula and take on this meaningful role, you’re in luck.
We’ve scoured the internet and evaluated the top online death doula training and certification courses available.
After hours of research and careful consideration, we’re excited to share our review of the best course that can equip you with the knowledge and skills to make a difference in the lives of others during one of life’s most difficult and transformative moments.
Keep reading to learn more and start your journey toward becoming a certified death doula in a few weeks.
Who is a Death Doula?
A death doula, also known as an end-of-life doula, is a non-medical professional who provides physical, emotional, and spiritual support to individuals and their families during the dying process.
Death doulas offer compassionate care to the dying and their loved ones, helping them navigate the practical and emotional aspects of death and dying.
Their services can include a wide range of activities, such as assisting with legacy projects, providing emotional support and companionship, helping with funeral planning, creating personalized end-of-life care plans, and more. Death doulas do not provide medical care, but instead, focus on providing holistic support to ensure a peaceful and comfortable end-of-life experience.
End-of-life doulas are becoming increasingly recognized for their important role in end-of-life care, as they can help ease the emotional and spiritual burden on patients, their families, and caregivers. By providing non-medical support, death doulas help people die with dignity and respect and support their loved ones through the grieving process.
Importance of death doula services
The roles of death doulas in the holistic care of patients are far to seek. Here are some important reasons why death doula services are valuable:
- Emotional and Spiritual Support: Death doulas provide compassionate support to the dying and their loved ones, helping them navigate the complex emotions and spiritual concerns that often arise at the end of life. They can offer a listening ear, provide comfort, and help individuals connect with their values and beliefs.
- Empowerment: Death doulas help people take an active role in their end-of-life care, empowering them to make informed decisions and take control of their final moments. They can help people create personalized end-of-life care plans, identify their priorities and preferences, and communicate their wishes to their loved ones and medical professionals.
- Practical Support: End-of-life doulas can assist with a wide range of practical tasks, such as helping with legacy projects, providing respite care for family members, and coordinating funeral arrangements. By handling these tasks, they help alleviate the burden on families and caregivers, allowing them to focus on spending quality time with their loved ones.
- Advocacy: Death doulas can act as advocates for the dying, ensuring their wishes are respected and their needs are met. They can work with medical professionals, hospice providers, and other members of the care team to ensure that the individual’s needs are being addressed and that they are receiving the best possible care.
- Grief Support: Death doulas can provide support to families and loved ones after a death has occurred, helping them navigate the grieving process and find meaning and purpose in the aftermath of loss. They can offer emotional support, facilitate support groups, and connect people with additional resources and services.
Overall, death doulas play a vital role in end-of-life care, helping individuals and families navigate the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of dying with dignity and respect.
By providing compassionate support, practical assistance, and advocacy, death doulas help people find peace and comfort in their final moments and support their loved ones through the grieving process.
Benefits of becoming a certified End of life doula
To get ahead of your mates in whatever career you choose for yourself, having a certification is the boost you need. In the job market, a certificate is the only way to objectively prove that you are an expert in whatever services you offer.
Here are some of the other benefits of taking a death doula training course before kickstarting your career:
- Professional Skills and Expertise: Through a death doula certification course, individuals can gain the knowledge and skills necessary to provide high-quality end-of-life care. They can learn about the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of dying, as well as how to offer compassionate support to individuals and families.
- Professional Credibility: Certification as a death doula can enhance a person’s professional credibility, demonstrating to clients and colleagues that they have the skills and knowledge necessary to provide effective end-of-life care.
- Personal Growth and Fulfillment: Serving as a death doula can be deeply fulfilling and rewarding, providing the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others during one of life’s most challenging moments. It can also promote personal growth, helping individuals develop greater empathy, compassion, and self-awareness.
- Increased Career Opportunities: As the demand for death doula services continues to grow, becoming certified as a death doula can open up new career opportunities. Certified death doulas can work in a variety of settings, such as hospice care, home health care, and senior living facilities.
- Community and Connection: Becoming a certified death doula can offer the opportunity to connect with a community of like-minded professionals and advocates. This can provide a sense of connection and support, as well as opportunities for continued learning and professional development.
Overall, becoming a certified death doula can offer a range of benefits, including professional skills and expertise, personal growth and fulfillment, increased career opportunities, and a sense of community and connection. It can also enable individuals to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others, promoting dignity, respect, and comfort during one of life’s most challenging moments.
How to Become a Death Doula using the Best online death doula training
Now let us dive into the main purpose of this blog post; how to become a certified end-of-life doula using the best death doula training programs out there.
A Quick step-by-step process for becoming a death doula:
- Get training: The first step to becoming an end-of-life doula is to be trained in the art of being one. As it is a delicate aspect of health care, not just anyone or organization can offer this training. So it is best to take your training from well-recognized organizations like the IAP Career College. However, if you already know a better end of life doula training course, then you really have no business reading the rest of this post as it will be of little value to you.
- Find Death Doula Jobs Near you: Having completed your end of life doula training, the next step is to find death doula jobs near you. However, it is worth noting that people who get the most promising jobs out there has one advantage over other candidates who may even have better skills than them. And this advantage is a certification. Keep reading, and you will see how you can easily get both a printable digital death doula certificate mailed to you within a few hours of completing your training.
- Scale your career: As you progress in your career as a death doula, you keep landing more promising jobs and better career opportunities will keep coming your way. But this benefit is only for those who are well-grounded in the art of end of life care. Only the best death doula training programs can give you this advantage.
Introducing the Best Death Doula Certification Course
Before we rank a course as one of the best, we objectively analyze them to make sure that they fit into 3 major criteria. These three criteria were derived from the need to offer the best possible training to interested candidates at an affordable price and within a short period of time.
3 Criteria We Used for Evaluating this course
- Credibility
- Cost
- Accessibility
- Credibility: By credibility, we imply that the certification you will earn by the end of this course is widely accepted all over the globe. This simply means that at the end of your training, and after you must have been named a certified death doula, you will be able to use your death doula certification to get jobs and render death doula services in any country across the globe.
- Cost: Among all other accredited death doula training courses you will find online, this course will give you far more value than the money you pay. While many other death doula training courses will “cut your neck”, costing hundreds to thousands of dollars to access, you can become a certified death doula for much less with more added value.
- Accessibility: Online certification courses are always the best because you can take them from the comfort of your home, at your own pace, and on your own time. This online death doula certification course can be taken online as long as you have a laptop, iPad, or mobile phone with an internet connection.
What is this course that has earned all these praises? It is “The IAP Death Doula Certification Course Online”.
IAP Death Doula Certification Course Online Reviews: Is It Worth the Hype?
Overview of the course
IAP stands for International Association of Professions Career College. This group aims to offer the best affordable online certificate programs for dream careers.
The end of life doula certification course is one of the most newly added certification courses by the IAP career college. In this part-time online Death Doula Certificate Course, you will learn important principles and practical step-by-step techniques for providing end-of-life support services and getting started in a career and business as a professional death doula. You will learn how to become a death doula and earn a death doula certification.
Key features and benefits of this Death Doula Certification Course
The online End of Life Doula Certificate Course has been developed to meet high academic standards, ensuring that as a graduate you can display with pride the Death Doula Certificate you will earn from the International Association of Professions Career College (IAP Career College).
Highlights of the topics in this course:
- Introduction
- Why Death Doulas Matter
- How Death Doulas Differ From Other End-of-Life ProfessionalsThe End-of-Life and Dying Industry
- Death Doula Specializations
- Elder Care
- Providing Support and Comfort to the Terminally Ill
- Respite Care for the Family
- Facilitating Legacy and Life Review Project
- Conducting Living Funerals
- Planning and Conducting Vigils
- Mourning and Post-Loss Support
- Facilitating with Post-Death Home Organization
- Pet Doula Death Services
- What an End-of-Life Doula Does
- Tools of the Trade (and How to Use Them)
- How to “Hold the Space” for Someone
- Initial Consultations: Deep Listening + Empowerment
- Talking About Life and Dying
- Discussing Advanced Care Directives
- Discussing After-Death Body Care, Burial, and Funerals
- Understanding the Needs of the Dying
- Using Traditional and Newly Created Rituals
- Educating the Family on the Dying Process
- Developing Your Skills
- Essential Skills for Death Doulas (Ethical Awareness, Self-Care Skills and More)
- Getting Comfortable with Death and Dying
- Learning From End-of-Life Experts
- Volunteer Experience for Prospective Death Doulas
- End-of-Life Doula/Midwife Training Programs
- Starting a Death Doula Business
- Business Planning
- Choosing a Business Name
- Choosing Your Location
- Employees and Contractors
- Setting Your Fees
- Getting Paid
- Client Contracts
- Getting Clients
- Your Target Markets
- Promotional Tools
- Marketing Techniques
- Getting Free Publicity
- Conducting Workshops and Seminars
- Selling Your Services
Pros and cons of this Death Doula Training Course
Everything that has advantages will surely have one or more disadvantages. In this section, we will be reviewing some of the pros and cons of the IAP death doula certification program.
Pros:
Apart from all the other general benefits you can get from taking some of the other best death doula training programs out there, here are some benefits that clearly distinguish the IAP death doula certification course from all other end of life training programs:
- Once you enroll for this course, you will be assigned to a dedicated faculty member to provide you with personal teaching assistance and business advice throughout the course of your training.
- Optional membership in the IAPO International Association of Professional Death Doulas. This grants you the opportunity to make solid connections that will be beneficial in your career as a death doula.
- Downloadable Death Doula Certificate (Death Doula Certification) personalized with your name and the seal of the International Association of Professions Career College which you may print.
- (Optional) Opportunity to order official certificates printed on fine linen paper and embossed with the gold seal of the college
- Free access to the Textbook: IAP Career College Guide to Become a Death Doula (e-book edition)
Cons:
- Limited hands-on experience: One of the potential downsides of any online death doula course is that students may not have as much opportunity for hands-on experience as they would in an in-person course. Although online courses may offer virtual simulations and role-playing exercises, these experiences may not fully replicate the challenges and nuances of working with actual dying patients and their families.
- Limited interaction with instructors and classmates: Online death doula courses may lack the in-person interaction that many students find valuable for building connections with instructors and classmates. Without face-to-face interaction, students may find it more challenging to ask questions, receive feedback, or engage in group discussions, which could limit the overall learning experience.
Course length
The standard time for the completion of the death doula training by the IAP is 6 weeks. However, you can choose to complete this course between 4 to 12 weeks depending on your schedule and preferences
Why do We recommend this Course?
- Increasing demand: With an aging population and growing interest in end-of-life care, the demand for death doulas is on the rise. Completing a death doula certification course can help individuals gain the knowledge, skills, and credibility they need to succeed in this field.
- Personal growth and fulfillment: Working as a death doula can be a deeply meaningful and fulfilling experience. It can also provide an opportunity for personal growth and reflection, as individuals are often confronted with their own mortality and the fragility of life.
- Improved end-of-life care: Death doulas can help improve end-of-life care by providing emotional support, companionship, and advocacy for patients and their families. They can also help patients navigate the dying process and plan for a meaningful and peaceful death.
- Comprehensive training: A death doula certification course can provide comprehensive training on a variety of topics related to end-of-life care, such as grief and bereavement, spiritual care, legal and ethical issues, and communication skills. This training can help individuals feel more confident and prepared to work with patients and their families.
- Professional development: Completing a death doula certification course can demonstrate to potential clients and employers that an individual is committed to the field and has the necessary skills and knowledge to provide high-quality end-of-life care. This can help individuals stand out in a competitive job market and potentially lead to career advancement opportunities.
Are you ready to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the dying and their families? Take the first step towards a fulfilling career as a death doula by enrolling in our comprehensive certification course today!
Gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence you need to provide compassionate end-of-life care and support. Don’t wait – invest in yourself and your future by signing up for our death doula certification course now!
Additional Resources:
Get a Certificate as a Professional Death Doula in 6 weeks online at IAP Career College!
