What is Death Competency?

Death competency is 'a range of human skills and capabilities in dealing with death, as well as our beliefs and attitudes about these capabilities’ (Robbins, 1994). Being death competent does not necessarily mean that a person does not experience death anxiety - feeling anxious about death is a natural part of being human. It is possible for us to feel anxious about dealing with death and dying whilst also being highly competent at doing so - it all depends on our awareness and the steps we take to self-development. 

Put simply, death competency refers not only to a person's knowledge about death and dying but their ability to identify, explore and overcome their own death anxiety and the impact this has on themselves and those they support.

Evidence suggests that healthcare professionals who have higher death anxiety are more likely to:

• have reduced confidence in discussing end-of-life care with patients and families
• avoid end-of-life conversations with patients
• Suffer from burn-out and compassion fatigue 
• delay end-of-life planning with patients
• engage in less collaborative working with colleagues regarding patients' advance directive needs
• Engage in poor-quality patient-practitioner communication

Literacy is about knowledge. Competency is about the application of knowledge in a meaningful way. Death literacy and death competency are related but distinct concepts, focusing on different aspects of engaging with death and dying.

In recent years there has been growing interest in the concept of death literacy - the knowledge and skills a person needs to be able to access, understand, and make informed choices about, end of life options. Death literacy is undoubtedly an important concept for professionals working with death and dying, and for all of us as mortal human beings who will one day have to deal with the deaths of others and ourselves.

However, we believe that in order for a person's knowledge about death and dying to result in behaviour change - in them using and applying this knowledge for the benefit of themselves and others, a person must also be death competent. That is, they must have an awareness of their own relationship with death and dying and of their own individual level of death anxiety.

We offer a range of training and consultancy services for health and social care professionals, including one-on-one sessions, workshops, tailored consultancy to help services foster death competency development within their staff teams, and support groups. Use the contact us box to schedule a free consultation to discuss how we can support your vision of a supported staff team who in turn are equipped to provide high-quality end-of-life care.