When providing care to children with life-limiting conditions and serious illness, clinicians need to skillfully support families in navigating complexity and grief within compounding uncertainty.

This is difficult to do when clinicians are bearing the weight of their own grief and rarely have educational opportunities to engage with the embodied wisdom of Family Advocates.

RedBird's Brave Spaces offer significant partnerships and resources for integrating family perspectives into improving care through consultation, skills development, systems change, clinician wellness and bereavement care.

Clinicians in critical care more frequently face patient deaths and high-acuity cases, yet grief education is largely absent from medical training and inconsistently available in hospitals. This gap leaves healthcare professionals unprepared to manage workplace-related grief, contributing to burnout, reduced resilience, and compromised patient care. Without structured education and accessible support, clinician well-being and career longevity remain at risk.

RedBird's Attune Program empowers clinicians with illuminating education and innovative interventions to support their grief and wellbeing.

A respected Family Advocate and Clinician Educator in pediatric palliative care and hospice, Dannell is known as a thought leader, trusted educator, and purposeful community builder. She brings forward the embodied wisdom of family perspectives with charisma and warmth.

Dannell's passion for improving care and supporting clinician longevity comes from being the mother of Levi, a child born with severe HIE and medical complexities. She led an in-home ICU for seven years till his death. In her leadership roles she engages deeply with clinicians and witnesses first hand the challenges impacting their longevity and sustainability.

LEADERSHIP ROLES

~ National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care, Pediatric Division, Family Advocate since 2020

~ National Concurrent Care Convening 2024

~ University of Minnesota, Department of Pediatrics, End-of-Life Skills Workgroup, Bereaved Parent Faculty since 2018

~ Minnesota's Palliative Care Advisory Council, Family Advocate since 2017

~ Minnesota's Pediatric Palliative Care Coalition, Family Advocate since 2014

When a young child experiences the death of a loved one they begin a remarkable grief journey that impacts their growth as a human being. Grief education with caring adults has been shown to be important for children’s resiliency.

We have created a Grief Picture Book Guide to help you find the best books for the children you care for.

This year we are creating innovative resources to better support grieving families and clinicians.

It begins with saying goodbye to impersonal sympathy cards and hello to the launch of our Compassion Cards ~ designed specifically for clinicians to send to bereaved families.

We are further supporting clinicians with the launch of The Indelible Ones, a guided journal providing support after the death of a patient.

When you become a RedBird supporter you help us get these resources into the hands of clinicians who need them now.