The International End-of-Life Care Association is a global learning community offering online, self-paced doula certification, focused education, and family caregiver support. Our work makes room for the many ways people care for others through illness, dying, death, and grief.
Global Community
Learners in over 30 countries
5-Star Ratings
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Practitioner-Led
Grounded in real experience
Personal Guidance
Feedback and educator support
The Platinum Rule guides everything we teach: support people as they wish to be supported.
Care takes many forms: sitting beside someone who is dying, supporting a family through uncertainty, helping someone prepare for a beloved animal’s death, or caring for a loved one at home. IEOLCA exists to make thoughtful, practical education accessible to people drawn to these deeply human experiences.
Our programs include end-of-life doula and pet death doula certification, focused learning in dementia and memory care, assisted-dying support, rituals, and business development, alongside education for family caregivers. Some learners come with years of experience. Others arrive through a personal loss, a caregiving role, or a growing wish to be of service.
We welcome those different starting points. Our purpose is to help people develop understanding, practical skills, and confidence while honoring the wishes, values, and circumstances of those they support.
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These commitments shape how we create programs, support students, and understand the role of an end-of-life doula.
Support starts with listening. We teach students to learn what matters to each person, including their wishes, values, culture, identity, beliefs, relationships, fears, and hopes, rather than assuming what good support should look like.
We teach compassionate, non-medical, and non-directive support grounded in humility, clear scope, ethical boundaries, and respect for individual autonomy.
Flexible online learning, honor-based tuition, lifetime access, personal feedback, and respect for different starting points help more people find their place in this work.
From our home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, IEOLCA brings together learners in over 30 countries with different backgrounds, beliefs, life experiences, and reasons for learning. Their care reaches people, families, animals, and communities in many different settings, with room for both personal learning and professional growth.
Beyond the lessons, our Graduate Hub, Doula Directory, and Death Doula Magazine offer ways to stay connected with the wider work of care. Student reflections help show what this learning means in people’s lives.
Foundational certification, focused programs, and continuing education for varied paths in end-of-life care.
The Graduate Hub provides continued resources, community, professional tools, and opportunities to stay involved.
A place for individuals and families to connect with trained doulas offering non-medical support.
Stories, practical wisdom, and grounded perspectives that broaden conversations about death, dying, grief, and care.
“IEOLCA has deepened my relationship with life, aging and death. As a 25 year pet professional and life coach, I was searching for a program that offered support for both people and animals. The pet death doula and human death doula certifications from IEOLCA far exceeded my expectations!”
“An incredible resource for those seeking a thorough curriculum. The combination of videos and written materials provides an in-depth overview of compassion, listening, person-centered care, family relations, proper boundaries, and self-care.”
“IEOLCA gave me practical tools, guidance on boundaries, and a deeper understanding of how to support people with compassion during one of life's most sacred times.”
A lifelong thread of caregiving and service, and the conversation that helped it become something more.
For much of my life, I was the person people turned to when they needed someone to listen, help, or simply be there. Through family life, caregiving, and experiences of love and loss, I learned how much it can mean to have someone beside you when life feels uncertain.
I didn’t know those experiences were leading me anywhere in particular. They were simply part of living and loving. Only later did I recognize a thread running through them: a deep respect for people’s stories, and a wish to meet them with tenderness and care.
As my children grew older, I wanted to bring that care into my work more intentionally. I had spent many years in healthcare and medical education, but I felt drawn toward more personal connection. Then I learned about end-of-life doulas, and something in me recognized the path.
I followed that curiosity into hands-on care, hospice volunteering, and doula training. I continue to support people and families in hospice and offer pro bono doula care in my community. These relationships keep our teaching connected to the realities of care.
At first, IEOLCA was only a possibility. I wanted to keep supporting people directly, help make conversations about dying and grief more natural, and share what I had learned. I wasn’t quite sure how those pieces could fit together.
During a visit with my sister in California, a conversation brought my interests together: what if I created an online end-of-life doula training program? My years in healthcare education and my growing experience in end-of-life care suddenly felt like parts of the same story.
I began imagining an approach to education that felt as welcoming as the work itself: thoughtful and practical, with room for reflection, different life circumstances, and the many ways people may feel called to serve.
Compassionate education could meet people where they are, and help them discover where their own path might lead.
Perry’s experience in spiritual health, palliative care, and whole-person support brought another perspective. Together, we built IEOLCA around kindness, practical preparation, and respect for the uniqueness of every person.
We wanted students to learn at their own pace, return to their lessons as life unfolds, and explore this work without feeling they had to fit a particular mold. Flexible learning, honor-based tuition, and personal support became part of how we put those values into practice.
At the heart of it all is the Platinum Rule: support people as they wish to be supported. It guides our approach to care and the way we support students finding their own place in this work.
What began as a personal journey has become an international learning community. Our hope is that IEOLCA offers others the encouragement, knowledge, and space to follow the path that feels meaningful to them.
IEOLCA’s education is shaped by complementary experience in healthcare learning, hospice service, spiritual health, whole-person care, and the realities of supporting people through vulnerable moments.
Director & Lead Educator
Amy-Lynne brings more than 30 years of healthcare experience, including nearly two decades in postgraduate medical education. Her background includes curriculum development, learner assessment, program evaluation, and quality improvement.
Her Health Care Aide training, home-care experience, end-of-life doula education, ongoing hospice service, and pro bono community support inform her teaching.
At IEOLCA, she leads educational direction, curriculum development, learner assessment, program documentation, and personally reviews required student assignments.
Co-Director & Curriculum Developer
Perry is a Spiritual Health Practitioner with 20 years of clinical experience across acute care, mental health, palliative care, forensic psychiatry, and hospice settings.
His advanced Clinical Pastoral Education and graduate-level study in leadership inform a compassionate, trauma-informed, person-centered approach to spiritual care, grief support, education, and mentorship.
At IEOLCA, Perry contributes expertise in the emotional, spiritual, existential, cultural, and relational dimensions of end-of-life care. He also reviews curriculum for whole-person care, inclusion, clear scope, and practical relevance.
Whether you’re preparing for doula practice, adding knowledge to an existing role, or caring for someone you love, explore learning that meets your interests and circumstances.
Honor-based tuition means you choose the available tuition level that fits your circumstances, without an application or proof of income. View tuition options →
