Training • Mentorship
End-of-Life Doula Certification

Helping families receive better support by educating the people who care for them.

Learn The Top 10 Issues Families Face & What To Do (Free)

Whether you’re caring for someone you love, deepening your professional skills,
or exploring end-of-life doula work, you’ll find a place to begin here.

Choose your starting point.

🟦 Family Training & Resources 👉 Here.
Learn what helps families before, during & after hospice.

🟦 Professional Training & Mentorship👉 Here.
Deepen your knowledge, judgment, and practical skills.

🟦 End-of-Life Doula Certification 👉Here.
Professional training for those ready to serve families.

Better Support Begins With Better Understanding

Supporting the dying and their family well requires judgment, discernment, and wisdom that AI and free courses simply can’t teach. Those things are developed through experience, guidance and/or mentorship.

If you’ve spent time beside advanced illness, you’ve seen how easily it is to become overwhelmed. You’ve seen the confusion, changing goals, disagreements, and the questions nobody seems able to answer. You know the feeling that something important is happening, but no one is clearly explaining what it means.

Maybe you’ve experienced it in your own family. Maybe you see it in your professional work. And you know you want to gain more awareness, depth and skills to do more than you are now.

For more than 26 years, along with serving families herself, Deanna has mentored healthcare professionals, end-of-life doulas, and everyday people who wanted to support others with greater confidence, wisdom, and skill.

Wanting to help isn’t enough

Supporting families well requires more than compassion. It requires judgment, clear boundaries, and a structured way to provide steady guidance.

If you have that now great! If you want to develop this in a structured way, we can help.

The Least Understood Time Period

Families suffer the most before hospice begins because this is the least understood part of the journey and where the MOST suffering occurs. That’s why everyone supporting a family needs to know this terrain well. CareDoula® was built on the strong foundation of pre-hospice palliative care.

If you’d like to explore these topics and learn at your own pace before deciding what’s next, begin with “Learn What End-of-Life Doulas Should Know” below.

Start Here

Learn What End-of-Life Doulas Should Know

Learn the Top 10 Issues Families Face Before Hospice Begins—and why understanding them changes everything about how you support others.

Start The Free Training

Meet Happy Students

Real People, Real Stories

  • Trusting Myself

    “Working with you has helped me align with what feels right to me; validation from someone with your knowledge and experience in this field has changed me forever…”
    Tiffany Anne Rauch

  • You’re such a teacher!

    “I so appreciate the chance to learn with you. You’re such a teacher! I love that you speak from your own experience, that you welcome any and every question, that you somehow ‘hold space’ for where every person is at. And I love that you speak easily, from a deep place of integrity and that you allow your amusement free reign!”
    Nancy Simmers

  • Deanna’s years of experience allows her to speak very clearly…

    “…Deanna’s years of experience allows her to speak very clearly and easily about how issues at the end-of-life and the types of things we need to work through…She taught me a lot about reorienting myself as an instrument for my person. I think it’s really brilliant how she’s able to do that.”
    Dustin Maxwell

  • She makes this very difficult subject matter understandable…

    “Deanna is warm, she’s funny…she makes this very difficult subject matter understandable…”
    Andrea Ciannavei

  • …an amazing teacher…

    “And this beautiful, sacred journey continues…honestly, it took a lot out of me to accomplish, but it was all sooo worth it. Thank You Deanna for being such an amazing teacher…”
    América Martinez

  • …thought provoking material…

    “You have put together a well thought out series of classes that is filled with both thought provoking material and also with information that enhances people’s personal journeys. It isn’t often that happens.”
    Dayle Olsen

For those drawn to certification…

Certified CareDoula®

The first End-of-Life Doula Certificate Program in the United States, founded in 2010.

The Certified CareDoula® program provides professional training, mentorship, and community for those ready to serve families with steadiness and skill.

This is not casual learning. This is professional training for people ready to understand the role clearly and build a real service.

Over 26 years at the bedside, three elements have consistently proven essential.

CareDoula’s Signature Three

This is what that includes:

  • Pre-Hospice Mastery – Know what happens before hospice begins.
  • Professional Service Structure – Serve with clear boundaries and confidence.
  • The Art of Accompanying the Dying – Learn how to be fully present without overstepping.

Learn more about certification. 👉HERE.

Deanna Flores Cochran, RN, CareDoula® Education Founder

For more than 26 years, I’ve walked with families and trained healthcare professionals and non-medical advocates on how to accompany and advocate through the difficult stretch from when treatments stop working through the end of life.

I created a way of accompanying the dying that not only supports those you serve, but also sustains you in the work.

P.S. If you already know you’d like my guidance, you’re welcome to request a conversation.