Health Care Providers

Nurses, doctors, hospice providers, mental health professionals and social workers are commonly faced with questions about life, death and what comes after. At times, their patients and clients may describe near-death experiences, yet the providers may be unfamiliar with near-death experience research and how to respond to their patients. 

IANDS aims to empower health providers with important resources

Medical Training Video

This groundbreaking video features six highly qualified medical professionals, including Dr. Eben Alexander, best-selling author of Proof of Heaven, and Dr. Bruce Greyson, pioneering and currently foremost NDE researcher. In addition, near-death experiencers describe their amazing journeys into the afterlife and back. Originally created to prepare medical health, mental health, and spiritual/religious health professionals to respond to NDE disclosure with ethical best practices, this video captivates general audiences, as well.

Health Care Training Video

In “Facilitating or Blocking the Passage: Healthcare Professionals’ Responses to Near-Death Experience Disclosure” Dr. Jan Holden from the University of North Texas interviews Leslie, a near-death experiencer (NDEer), about her distressing experience disclosing her NDE to medical professionals. Jan then presents results of a study indicating how frequently NDErs have felt harmed by disclosing their NDEs to medical health, mental health, and spiritual/religious health professionals, as well as family and friends. She concludes with recommendations for healthcare professionals and others to incorporate into their response to NDE disclosure—recommendations that enable the health professional to uphold their ethical mandate (and family and friends to uphold their personal moral code) to do no harm to near-death and related experiencers.

Additional valuable resources for health care providers

  • Veridical Perception Video—In this video, Dr. Lloyd Rudy reports a case of veridical perception—perception during an NDE that is later verified as accurate—in which Dr. Rudy was the attending physician. The evidential nature of the veridical perception is particularly strong in that what the patient “saw” during his NDE was idiosyncratic and could not have been deduced through hearing. 
  • Narrative Inquiry In Bioethics 2020 VOICES Issue—Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research (NIB; Vol. 10, No. 3) in 2020 published a special issue on “Healthcare After a Near-Death Experience,” containing a collection of personal stories from individuals who had a near-death experience, as well as articles by healthcare and other professionals. IANDS raised money to publish VOICES: Personal Stories from the Pages of NIB, produced for the Foundation for Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics by Johns Hopkins University Press. These accounts serve as an educational resource to help patients, families, and healthcare providers close the gap of care for experiencers.
  • Providing Care for Near-Death and Related Experiencers: IANDS 2021 Spring Symposium — This one-day symposium offers both professionals and lay people  the knowledge and confidence to fulfill their professional ethical and personal moral responsibility to do no harm to near-death and related experiencers. Contributors included healthcare providers (medical, mental, social, and spiritual) and a bioethicist​ who described evidence-based and ethical best practices in responding to NDE disclosure.
  • NDE Radio Interview ‘Closing the Medical Gap of Care of NDE Patients’ – Near-death experiencer Lilia Samoilo a minister and mental health and spiritual counselor for over 35 years, and  Heidi Walsh,  managing editor for Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics: A Journal of Qualitative Research (NIB), discuss how to close the gap of care for patients with NDEs.

IANDS resources for health care providers