Photo: Deb Thomas (left), Cornwall Hospice Care’s Education Lead and Gina Starnes, the hospice’s Director of Clinical Services. Cornwall Hospice Care is supporting the launch of a new Cornwall- specific learning path for health and social care staff who provide end of life care. The “passport” launched in collaboration with REACH Cornwall- which supports skills development – will allow its holders to collect evidence of all their learning. The development of the passport started when The End of Life Education Group for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly realised that any resource developed to address End of Life education needed to be available to all health and social care staff. The group was originally formed by representatives from the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust, Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Cornwall Hospice Care, South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust and representatives from our independent community care providers. Together they developed a bespoke learning path to guide and support staff working in primary, secondary and social care. Training in how to use this passport and other workshops in End of Life education will be delivered at the launch through a collaboration with REACH Cornwall, a forum part-funded by the European Social Fund. Deb Thomas is Cornwall Hospice Care’s Education Lead and a member of the Group; she said: “We worked closely with e-Learning for Health (e-LfH), a national e-Learning system run by Health Education England, to produce a blended approach of e-learning, face to face training, clinical interactions and reflections. “The idea is to combat the significant geographical and logistical issues staff face in Cornwall when trying to attend training.  After completion of the path and passport, users are then invited to discuss their experience with their local End of Life Lead/Link or Buddy after which they are given a badge to celebrate their success.  Interestingly, we shared the project at a regional Palliative Care Facilitator event in Torquay and were immediately approached by a regional EoL Network who want to develop something similar.” Gina Starnes, Cornwall Hospice Care’s Director of Clinical Services, said: “I’m delighted that this Learning Path and Passport is supporting education of those people across Cornwall who are looking after people at the end of their lives. It means that for the first time the County has a core understanding of the level of training that staff have undertaken, which in turn improves confidence for employers when recruiting new staff. “This joint initiative has drawn together expertise from many different organisations and is a fantastic example of what can be achieved by partnership working. Cornwall Hospice Care is very proud to be part of that wider team.” The passport itself has been funded by the Kernow Clinical Commissioning Group and feedback from nurses has been positive, with one commenting: “This is fantastic, you have just handed me everything I have been looking for.” Kieran Bignell, Consultant Paramedic and Head of Integrated Urgent Care at Kernow Health added: “Cornwall’s end of life education sub group is delighted to offer the health and social care community of Cornwall the opportunity to easily access this high quality, free resource to support, enable and empower individuals to improve their knowledge of end of life care. The end of life learning path has come with a huge amount of expert input to develop an educational solution that meets both the need for delivery of high quality end of life care to the people of Cornwall and the learning and development needs of our Health and Social care system.” For more information visit Cornwall Hospice Care