Dr. Leigh Donovan is a Thanatology Consultant and Pediatric Palliative Care Social Worker, who has walked alongside grieving families for more than twenty years.

In this episode, Leigh shares some of the most valuable learnings to have emerged from decades of approaching grief as a human encounter rather than through a lens of ‘clinicalising’ emotional distress.

Leigh also reflects on the findings of her Churchill fellowship research into peer-led models of bereavement care and work to establish peer-support programs in Australian hospital and hospice contexts. Finally, Leigh offers principles for emerging practitioners on sustaining long-term practice in palliative care and grief work; as well as learning how to tend to our needs as caregivers as we step into companioning the bereaved.