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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
Online Learning

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's teaching, drawn from her own work and archive and presented by the Foundation that carries it forward.

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The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation carries forward the work of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the Swiss-born psychiatrist whose 1969 book On Death and Dying opened a conversation about dying that medicine had long avoided, and who spent the rest of her life campaigning for hospice care and for the dying to be heard.

Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is the author of two dozen books, translated into 44 languages. On Death and Dying was named one of the New York Public Library's Books of the Century, and she was named an "unsung hero" of 20th-century science by TIME (1999).

The EKR Foundation works to increase access to quality hospice and palliative care around the world, to encourage compassionate care of the dying and the grieving, and to teach what Elisabeth taught, through its courses, its archive, and its international chapters.

The Foundation also works with filmmakers, authors, and publishers to bring Elisabeth's published work to new audiences. To learn more about her life and work, visit our main website at ekrfoundation.org.

 

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From Elisabeth:

“
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

 

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What others are saying...

“

Thanks in large part to Dr. Kübler-Ross’s great achievements, our society has made major advances in dealing with death and dying


-Mark Siegler, MD, American Journal of Bioethics

“

It was the work of Kübler-Ross, through writing, audiotapes and videotapes, that gave these patients the opportunity to tell their stories about what they were going through.


-David Magnus, PhD, Bioethics Dept., Stanford University

“

She single-handedly initiated the current transformation we are experiencing around Western culture's responses to death, dying and the bereaved.


-Joanne Cacciatore, PhD, MISS Foundation

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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross added how we die to the agenda of cultural revolutions taking place in realms of the environment, social rights, and health care.


-Ira Byock, MD

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"On Death & Dying" is one of the most important humanitarian works on the care of the dying written in the Western world


-Allan Kellehear, PhD

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It is not coincidence that the woman who taught us so much about death and dying as a process was truly the greatest champion of life.


-Muhammad Ali

Available Courses

Elisabeth's Core Teaching

The models and ideas she is known for, from her own work and in her own words.

The Kübler-Ross Change Curve®

$149

One-time Payment

  • Loss and change, from Elisabeth's original 1969 model, not the boardroom version
  • Where the organizational use began: families in her workshops
  • What each stage looks like in practice, and why explaining change tends to backfire
  • Two tracks: leading others through change, and facing it yourself
  • For leaders, coaches, clinicians, and anyone guiding others through change
  • 7 modules · 45 lessons · final assessment · Self-paced
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The Five Stages of Grief®

$149

One-time Payment

  • Each stage in the words of the people she interviewed
  • Why the stages are not a sequence and not a checklist
  • How the stages moved from the dying to those experiencing change and loss
  • HOPE: the thread through all five
  • Why only five are remembered, and why she is criticized for them
  • The pioneers Elisabeth worked alongside
  • The most rigorous class in the series — not a quick tour of five stages
  • 8 modules · 31 lessons · 4 knowledge checks · Self-paced
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On Death and Dying

$149

One-time Payment

  • An overview of the 1969 book and the interviews behind it
  • Chapter by chapter, with Elisabeth's original chart from the book
  • What dying patients taught Elisabeth, in their own words
  • More than five stages: the full picture, and what the summaries left out
  • Hope, the thread that runs through every stage
  • What patients wanted from their doctors
  • The family, the chaplain, and the nurse: everyone around the dying patient
  • Listening: the skill the whole book rests on
  • What the book still asks of hospice and end-of-life care today
  • 20 modules · 37 lessons · Self-paced
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Las cinco etapas del duelo (en español)

$149

Pago único

  • Nuestro primer curso completo en español
  • Lo que el libro de 1969 realmente dice: muchas más de cinco respuestas
  • El gráfico original de Elisabeth, con sus diez bandas superpuestas
  • La esperanza, presente de principio a fin
  • Las tres formas de negación que ella nombró, y cómo responder a cada una junto a la cama
  • La decatexis: el retiro del final que no es rechazo, explicado para las familias
  • Basado en los archivos de la familia Kübler-Ross, incluidas sus grabaciones de 1973
  • Qué responder cuando alguien dice que el modelo está desmentido
  • 8 módulos · 35 lecciones · 4 repasos · a su propio ritmo
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The Universal Laws of Kübler-Ross

$125

One-time Payment

  • The thirteen universal laws Elisabeth taught in her Life, Death and Transition workshops
  • The natural emotions, and what happens when each one is distorted
  • Why she said the only thing we are responsible for is our own thoughts, words, and actions
  • Drawn from workshop material donated by Larry Lincoln, who led the workshops with her
  • For anyone who wants Elisabeth's teaching in her own words
  • Not a self-help course: her laws, as she taught them, with the sources
  • 15 modules · 46 lessons · full video · Self-paced
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The Four Quadrants

$125

One-time Payment

  • Learn Kübler-Ross's Four Quadrants as a model of health
  • Recognize imbalance in the Physical (Body) and how to restore it
  • Tend the Emotional (Heart) without being overwhelmed by it
  • Engage the Intellectual (Mind) without letting it crowd out the rest
  • Nurture the Spiritual (Soul) in yourself and those you serve
  • Bring all four into balance in your own life and your work with the dying
  • 5 modules · 24 lessons · Self-paced
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At the Bedside: Elisabeth's Work with the Dying

What dying patients taught her, and how to listen and respond.

Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Verbal Language of the Dying

$125

One-time Payment

  • How the dying tell us what they cannot say directly
  • What symbolic language is, and how to answer it
  • From the children of Majdanek to her Chicago seminars
  • Lessons from her years at the bedsides of dying children
  • A real exchange in Elisabeth's own words, from 1974
  • For nurses, hospice staff, chaplains, doulas, and families
  • 5 modules · 20 lessons · Self-paced
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Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Nonverbal Language of the Dying

$125

One-time Payment

  • What the dying say with the body, the hands, the eyes, and silence
  • The objects they keep close or give away
  • Children's play and drawings, and the brothers and sisters no one asks
  • How to answer without words, and when to stay silent
  • What your own face and body are telling the patient
  • Spontaneous drawings: a hunch to follow with a question, never a diagnosis
  • 7 modules · 29 lessons · Self-paced
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Kübler-Ross: The Patient as the Teacher

$125

One-time Payment

  • How Elisabeth asked dying patients to be her teachers
  • What they taught her about hope that endures to the end
  • The unfinished business people need to resolve before they can let go
  • The four quadrants of a whole human being
  • Listening as a learner, not an expert
  • For doulas, hospice volunteers, nurses, chaplains, and anyone who sits with the dying
  • 7 modules · 32 lessons · Self-paced
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Grief and Loss

Regret, trauma, and loss across a lifetime, from childhood on.

Unfinished Business

$125

One-time Payment

  • Understand what "unfinished business" means at the end of life, in Elisabeth's own teaching
  • Work through the regrets behind "If only I had…"
  • Recognize countertransference before it shapes your care
  • Apply the Four Quadrants to whole-person support
  • Draw practical lessons from loss, your own and others'
  • Six case scenarios: the dying, the bereaved, a child, a family, and a nurse
  • 6 modules · 25 lessons · 6 case scenarios · Self-paced
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Grief and Bereavement in Childhood

$79

One-time Payment

  • Common misconceptions about how children grieve
  • Family-centered grief support, and what it looks like in practice
  • Matching support to a child's age, using Piaget's stages of development
  • Helping a child carry a loss into the rest of life
  • National and international resources for families
  • 8 modules · 61 lessons · final assessment · Self-paced
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For Funeral and Bereavement Professionals

Elisabeth's teaching for those who serve families at the time of a death and after.

Kübler-Ross for Funeral and Cemetery Professionals

$125

One-time Payment

  • Understanding the family in front of you
  • Anticipatory grief, sudden death, and the family who had no time
  • The Five Stages of Grief® as families actually show them
  • Unfinished business: guilt, overspending, and divided families
  • Symbolic language in the clothing, music, and words families choose
  • Difficult deaths, and caring for yourself as a caregiver
  • Final self-assessment and certificate of completion
  • 8 modules · 32 lessons · about 3 hours · Self-paced
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Aftercare: Kübler-Ross for Bereavement Follow-Up

$125

One-time Payment

  • What families live through after the funeral
  • Unfinished business and symbolic language in what survivors say
  • The Four Quadrants: seeing the whole person in grief
  • Follow-up around the real calendar of grief, including the second year
  • Remembrance programs for families of every age, faith, and tradition
  • When to refer, and caring for yourself as someone who carries others' grief
  • Final self-assessment and certificate of completion
  • 8 modules · 34 lessons · Self-paced
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Kübler-Ross on Caring for the Caregiver

$125

One-time Payment

  • Why Elisabeth turned to the caregivers, from her Life, Death and Transition workshops
  • The Four Quadrants: keeping your own balance
  • Grief piled on grief: natural and distorted emotions, numbness, and burnout
  • The persona: competent, calm, and cut off
  • Giving and receiving, and the trap of the caretaker's role
  • Daily tools: the 15-second rule, listening, silence, and presence
  • For funeral and cemetery staff, hospice teams, nurses, chaplains, doulas, and family caregivers
  • 8 modules · 34 lessons · final self-assessment · Self-paced
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