AC7141 - Death, Dying, and Grief: Public health challenges

On this module you will learn using a variety of approaches to learning and teaching. Interactive lectures will introduce and develop key theories, concepts, and debates on death, dying, and loss as these are rehearsed and discussed from different disciplines and professions, for example the interconnections and differences in understanding of dying, caregiving and grief and loss between the psychological or medical sciences and the social sciences.

Lecture materials will be made available through technology enabled learning, namely the e-learning portal and Panopto, together with links to key materials, for example the Lancet Commission Report on the Value of Death. In this module, you will be able to focus on a particular topic area of dying, ageing, death, caregiving, or loss that interests you and that you might want to progress through to dissertation. Through directed and independent study, you will be encouraged to integrate contemporary public health theory, policy and practice as applied to these topic areas, present your findings to both peers and tutors and engage in debates on key public health palliative care topics. These debates will occur in seminars, where you will form small cross-cultural and inter-professional collegiate groups which you will sustain throughout the Master of Public Health programme. Working in these small groups you will be able to present your findings and offer and receive critical peer review. Peer learning offers you opportunities to explain concepts to each other within a framework provided by staff, and to extend your learning through collaboration. In all these sessions, you will be guided by recognized senior members of the death, dying, and grief studies community.

You will be supported by the module lead and tutors who teach on the module. The academic staff who teach on the module have extensive experience of working in public health settings. Contact details for all academic and administrative team members are available in the module handbook on the e-learning portal.

Electronic teaching and learning materials are provided and updated on the e-learning portal. This includes module handbooks, assessment information, PowerPoint presentations used in class, reading lists and relevant web links. The University libraries offer an extensive collection of material, both hard copy and electronic, access to international databases and training in information retrieval. In addition, a variety of study skills related help guides and online videos can be found on the library Skills Plus site.

If you are an international student, you will also have access to an English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) module to help you further develop English language academic writing and study skills.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
1. You will demonstrate a systematic understanding of key social conduct and experiences at the end of life and the process of critically evaluating them at a deeper level.
2. You will learn how to critically analyse
the interconnecting links between experiences of dying, grieving and caregiving and the determinants of public health and explore underpinning discourses

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:
3. You will explore public health policy and practice issues in the key areas of the end-of-life.

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):
4. You will develop self-awareness of new knowledge gained from both national and global public health contexts.
5. You will be encouraged to reflect on your end-of-life experiences when working with peers from a variety of ethnic and cultural contexts.

Formative assessment
You will be asked to write a 1000 word outline of your proposed poster idea. This will be
submitted electronically by ESAF and feedback will be given by ESAF and verbally in a tutorial. The formative assessment will assess your developing critical writing skills and developing public health knowledge base. With further development this can inform your summative essay.

This summative module consists of two components and students are required to pass both components to pass the module overall.

Component 1 consists of a 2000 word essay demonstrating your understanding and critical evaluation of a key end-of-life experience topic and its relationship to public health policy and practice (comprising 70% weighting of the assessment)
Module learning outcomes:
KU: 1,2
PVA: 4

Component 2 consists of a poster presentation (comprising 30% weighting of the assessment) focusing on one of four possible topic areas (death, dying, grieving/bereavement or care giving).
Module learning outcomes:
IPSA: 3
PVA: 5

Both summative assessment components will be submitted via ESAF and feedback will be given by ESAF.

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This module offers you the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of a broad range of human behaviour and experiences at the end-of-life. There will be an introduction to the broad range of these medical, social and psychological experiences with an emphasis on both positive and negative personal and social characteristics of these experiences. This balanced portrayal of characteristics will exemplify and demonstrate the main features of dying, caregiving, and grief that must be leveraged by modern public health interventions and strategies. You will learn about where and what aspects of social conduct constitute the key challenges of (and conditions for) success of public health programmes. You will also learn about the importance of identifying and building upon the existing social assets (in person, family, neighbourhood, and community) and social troubles (personal, medical, and social troubles/challenges) at the end of life for the communities you work inside. The need for practices to equally address and evolve from both the challenges of suffering AND those of health and wellbeing will be stressed within the module.

You will learn (1) from the UK’s first public health programme in palliative care; from (2) some of the most senior and well-known academic and clinical authorities in the field of death, dying and grief studies; and (3) from a training emphasis on interdisciplinary ways of knowing that provides you with an holistic (as opposed to partial) understanding of experiences at the end of life.