Despite the clinical use of dignity therapy (DT) to enhance end-of-life experiences and promote an increased sense of meaning and purpose, little is known about the cost in practice settings. The aim is to examine the costs of implementing DT, including transcriptions, editing of legacy document, and dignity-therapists’ time for interviews/patient’s validation.

Analysis of a prior six-site, randomized controlled trial with a stepped-wedge design and chaplains or nurses delivering the DT.

The mean cost per transcript was $84.30 (SD = 24.0), and the mean time required for transcription was 52.3 minutes (SD = 14.7). Chaplain interviews were more expensive and longer than nurse interviews. The mean cost and time required for transcription varied across the study sites. The typical total cost for each DT protocol was $331–$356.

DT implementation costs varied by provider type and study site. The study’s findings will be useful for translating DT in clinical practice and future research.

Dignity Therapy (DT) has been implemented over the past 20 years, but a detailed training protocol is not available to facilitate consistency of its implementation. Consistent training positively impacts intervention reproducibility.

The objective of this article is to describe a detailed method for DT therapist training.

Chochinov's DT training seminars included preparatory reading of the DT textbook, in-person training, and practice interview sessions. Building on this training plan, we added feedback on practice and actual interview sessions, a tracking form to guide the process, a written training manual with an annotated model DT transcript, and quarterly support sessions. Using this training method, 18 DT therapists were trained across 6 sites.

The DT experts’ verbal and written feedback on the practice and actual sessions encouraged the trainees to provide additional attention to eight components: (1) initial framing (i.e., clarifying and organizing of the patient's own goals for creating the legacy document), (2) verifying the patient's understanding of DT, (3) gathering the patient's biographical information, (4) using probing questions, (5) exploring the patient's story thread, (6) refocusing toward the legacy document creation, (7) inviting the patient's expression of meaningful messages, and (8) general DT processes. Evident from the ongoing individual trainee mentoring was achievement and maintenance of adherence to the DT protocol.

The DT training protocol is a process to enable consistency in the training process, across waves of trainees, toward the goal of maintaining DT implementation consistency. This training protocol will enable future DT researchers and clinicians to consistently train therapists across various disciplines and locales. Furthermore, we anticipate that this training protocol could be generalizable as a roadmap for implementers of other life review and palliative care interview-based interventions.