The programme aims to equip clinicians to provide the best possible evidence-based palliative and end of life care. This master’s level module, Transforming Integrated Palliative and End of Life Care, saw its first intake of students this month.
Dr Karen Groves, Medical and Education Director at Queenscourt, said “palliative and end of life care is crucial to those who have need of it. We have only one chance to get it right for patients and their families and we know that many staff are very keen to do their very best.
“Yet many feel they do not have knowledge, confidence or skills to ensure the care they provide is ‘state of the art’. This interactive, clinically focused, course covers all the key components of holistic palliative and end of life care, to enable enthusiastic frontline professionals to provide the finest possible care for the patient and their family.”
Professor Barbara Jack, Head of Research in the Faculty of Health & Social Care at Edge Hill University, who is supporting the module said “the passion of the students, and hunger to learn how to provide the best care for their patients, was amazing, and by the interactive mode of the course it was clear to see how they were already developing enhanced skills”.
Keen participants on the multiprofessional course came from medicine, physiotherapy and nursing, in hospital, hospice and community settings. Staff, already committed to working with patients approaching the end of life, are using scenarios based around a fictional street and its families, to translate theory into practice in a very real way for them, considering the available evidence and how to put it into practice and developing their knowledge, skills and confidence.
Feedback from participants after the initial two days suggests that they feel excited, enthused, well supported and ‘champing at the bit’ to learn new skills, in mastery of the subject matter. As one participant put it ‘ I have done many master’s modules, but never one quite like this one!’
Queenscourt, in its Silver Jubilee year, has been able, with the help, support and joint working of Edge Hill, to ‘dip its toe into the water’ and create a lasting educational legacy for its next twenty five years, which will benefit the people of West Lancashire, Southport and Formby, as well as those farther afield.
For more information visit the programme’s website or contact Dr Karen Groves at Queenscourt Hospice.
Leave a Reply