The Harley School is seeking to inspire a new generation of hospice professionals to enter the field with educational programs that highlight the meaningful work involved in end-of-life care delivery.

Based in Rochester, New York, the college preparatory school’s curriculum includes a broad range of topics such as visual and performing arts, training in nursery and childhood education, civic engagement and a program focused on hospice education.

Teaching students about hospice care allows them to gain a deeper understanding of their potential to help others in both their professional and personal journeys, said Sybil Prince, a hospice, service learning, and mindfulness educator at The Harley School’s Center for Mindfulness & Empathy Education. Prince is also a licensed clinical social worker and an adjunct professor at the State University of New York Brockport.

“What I hear from students after they graduate is that they often feel like we’re planting seeds,” Prince told Hospice News. “We often hear years later that when a former student’s family member was dying, they knew what to do, how to help provide care and have those really difficult conversations. They appreciated learning about hospice when they were so young because it made all the difference in the world years down the road. Some of them want to be doctors, nurses or other medical professions, some had a loved one die and others just want to understand death better.”

Established in 1917, The Harley School launched its hospice program more than 20 years ago to introduce students to compassionate and inspiring workforce opportunities. The program is available as an elective course for 12th grade high school students.

On average, roughly 60% or 70% of senior students at The Harley School elect to take the course each year, Prince stated. In addition to individuals seeking a career in hospice and other health care areas, some graduates of the program also enter a variety of end-of-life and postmortem careers including funeral home administration, she said.

The hospice curriculum examines the philosophical, psychological, spiritual and cultural aspects of mortality and life through various avenues. In the classroom, students receive hands-on training on how to provide physical care to patients by practicing on a mannequin in a facilitated hospital setting.

They also assist volunteers providing bedside care to an average of 50 individuals annually. Students work side by side with volunteers assisting hospice patients and their families at two private comfort care homes in the Rochester, New York, area. Student volunteers assist with meal preparation, feeding and companionship.

“So much of what we do is perspective-taking and preparing the students to see what it’s like to be diagnosed with a terminal illness,” Prince said. “This curriculum is bringing the opportunity to be with people who are dying and it’s stoking the fire of their empathy, which is awakened through these meaningful opportunities to be at the bedside.”

The program also includes field trips to cemeteries, crematoriums, funeral homes and other end-of-life spaces. This allows students to directly engage with various professionals in these fields such as funeral home directors and administrators in a learning environment versus during a time of loss or crisis, Prince said.

Grief education is an additional “huge part” of the hospice program, she said. Engaging students in conversations about death, dying and bereavement is an important component of normalizing these topics throughout their lifetime.

“They’ve learned skills that are transferable to help different people in all different situations in life,” Prince told Hospice News. “This is our future generation that’s going to be caring for us, so we want them to be comfortable having these difficult conversations about the end of life and comfortable in different spaces related to it.”