EKR Education
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation Online Learning
Self-paced online courses built from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s own books, recordings, and workshops, taught by the Foundation and by people who worked beside her. Available worldwide, with lifetime access.
COURSES
On Death and Dying
The book that changed how the world talks about dying, taught chapter by chapter. Learn what Dr. Kübler-Ross’s patients taught her, how the model developed, and how it holds up against challenges of today’s medicine. For clinicians, chaplains, nurses, death doulas, students, and readers of the book.
20 modules · 36 lessons · Self-paced · Taught by Ken Ross, President of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
Enroll — $79
The Five Stages of Grief®
Most people believe they already know the Five Stages, and have already decided what they think of them. This course goes back to the source. Dr. Kübler-Ross first published the four stages in 1968, and the chart at the back of On Death and Dying shows ten overlapping responses. Follow how her model evolved between 1968 and 1974, and why five became the number the world remembered, and how her work helps you listen and stay with a person in front of you, without ever becoming a checklist. For death doulas, nurses, social workers, hospital staff, and anyone going through grief.
6 modules · 30 lessons · 4 knowledge checks · Self-paced · Taught by the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
The 4 Quadrants
Dr. Kübler-Ross’s map of the whole person: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. A framework for seeing where a patient or mourner is being cared for and where they are being missed. For clinicians, chaplains, and anyone in a caring role.
5 modules · 22 lessons · Self-paced · Taught by Jacob Watson, former Life, Death, and Transition Workshop staff
Unfinished Business
The concept Dr. Kübler-Ross returned to more than any other: the unspoken words, unresolved conflicts, and unlived parts of life that surface at the end. How to recognize unfinished business in patients and families, why it drives so much of the fear and struggle around dying, and how to help people complete it while there is still time. For hospice and palliative staff, counselors, chaplains, and family caregivers.
5 modules · 16 lessons · Self-paced · Taught by the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Verbal Language of the Dying
Dying patients almost always know, and when it cannot be said plainly, they say it another way: a trip that must be packed for, a house falling apart, a bear who is very sick. Learn to recognize the symbolic language Dr. Kübler-Ross heard from the children of Majdanek to her Chicago seminars and the bedsides of dying children, and how to answer inside the symbol so the conversation stays open. Includes a real exchange in her own words from 1974. For nurses, hospice and palliative staff, chaplains, physicians, death doulas, and family caregivers.
5 modules · 19 lessons · Self-paced · Taught by the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation
The Universal Laws of Kübler-Ross
The principles Dr. Kübler-Ross taught in her Life, Death, and Transition workshops, drawn from the material of workshop leader Larry Lincoln. For workshop alumni and anyone seeking her broader teaching.
13 modules/laws · 43 lessons · Self-paced · Taught by Larry Lincoln, former head of the Life, Death, and Transition Workshops, from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s original teaching
Grief and Bereavement in Childhood
How children understand death at each age, how their grief differs from adult grief, and how to support a grieving child at home, at school, and in care settings. For parents, teachers, school counselors, and pediatric staff.
23 lessons, organized by age from infancy through adolescence · Self-paced · Taught by Lanise Shortell, RN, CHPPN, pediatric hospice and palliative care nurse and EKR Foundation Advisory Council member
The Trauma of Loss
An introduction to grief for everyone. Seventeen short lessons on what loss does to a person and what actually helps, grounded in Dr. Kübler-Ross’s work. For the bereaved, their families, and those who support them.
17 lessons · 1 assessment · Self-paced · Taught by Lanise Shortell, RN, CHPPN, pediatric hospice and palliative care nurse and EKR Foundation Advisory Council member
COMING SOON
Kübler-Ross on Symbolic Language: The Nonverbal Language of the Dying
What dying patients and children show us when they cannot say it: through the body, silence, objects, play, and the things they make.
Introduction to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Her life and work, told with firsthand recollections from her family and the people who worked beside her.
Listening to the Dying
Her interview method: how she got patients to speak, what she did with silence, and what she learned to hear.
Kübler-Ross for Funeral and Cemetery Professionals: Understanding the Family in Front of You
What Dr. Kübler-Ross taught about grief, applied to the arrangement conference, the service, and the weeks after, and to the load carried by the staff who do this work every day.
To be notified when a course opens, email .
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
The Foundation also offers live events on grief, loss, and Dr. Kübler-Ross’s work, led by Susan Barber, our Community Outreach Manager. Talks, workshops, and community gatherings, online and in person, open to everyone.
Follow the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation on Eventbrite to be notified of upcoming events and reserve a seat.
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s Legacy
The Foundation’s courses are drawn from the seven areas of Dr. Kübler-Ross’s work outlined below. Courses now available are listed above; others are in development.
I The Wheel of Life
– Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Model of Inspiration
– Lessons from EKR’s Life
– Her Firsthand Legacy: Family, Colleagues, and Students
II On Death & Dying
– Lessons from the Dying / The Patient as Teacher
– EKR Speaking to Dying Patients
– The Stages of Dying
– How the Stages Evolved, 1968–1974: From the First Interviews to the Model We Know
– Truth-Telling and the Conspiracy of Silence
– The Family as Patient
– Children and Death
– Bioethics
– Hospice and Palliative Care
– The Four Quadrants: Caring for the Whole Person
III On Grief & Grieving
– The Five Stages of Grief
– The Kübler-Ross Change Curve
– The Trauma of Loss
– Children and Grief
– Grief and Bereavement in Childhood
IV Unfinished Business
– Unfinished Business at the End of Life
– Completing Unfinished Business with Patients and Families
– The Living Funeral and Saying Goodbye
V Life, Death, and Transition
– The LDT Workshops and Externalization
– The Universal Laws of Kübler-Ross
– Countertransference
– Facing and Understanding Death
– Challenging Your Fears and Perspective
– Care of the Caregiver
– Death: The Final Stage of Growth
VI The Language of the Dying and the Grieving
– Symbolic Language: Verbal
– Symbolic Language: Nonverbal
– Spontaneous Drawings
– Listening to the Dying
– Life After Death
– Loss and Spirituality
VII Unconditional Love
– Inner Hitlers / Mother Teresas
– Listening
– Compassionate Care