End of Life Aid Skills for Everyone in Scotland

Abstract

Families, friends and communities have an important role to play in providing informal support when someone is faced with deteriorating health, caring responsibilities, death or bereavement. However, people can lack the confidence, skills and opportunities to offer this support. Public education is an example of a public health approach to palliative care that can help to develop individual skills and knowledge relating to these issues. In Scotland, the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care (SPPC) has developed a new public education course called End of Life Aid Skills for Everyone (EASE) which aims to enable people to be more comfortable and confident supporting family/community members with issues they face during dying, death and bereavement. The aim was to design a course that imparts knowledge and skills while supporting development of social networks and avoids presenting professionals as the sole repository of expertise in the area of caring, dying and grieving. The intention was also to establish a sustainable delivery model that didn’t rely too heavily on busy palliative care specialists and which had the potential to bring the course to a diversity of communities. This article outlines the development of the EASE course, from conception to delivery.

The Compassionate Communities Connectors model for end-of-life care: implementation and evaluation

“…It also highlighted the need to educate health providers about community-led initiatives and compassionate communities volunteer roles. 19 There is positive evidence emerging from public health palliative care initiatives, including reductions in hospital admissions, 20 reduced loneliness, 21 improved death literacy, 22,23 improved intergenerational connections 24 and stronger connections between community members and healthcare services. 25,26 However, recent systematic reviews and research collaborations have acknowledged the challenges associated with researching and evaluating public health palliative care initiatives.…”

Factors associated with death literacy among Swedish adults: A cross-sectional exploratory study

“…There is growing international support for the validity of the DLI; to date, it has been validated in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Turkey, with studies ongoing in, for example, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China. While the cross-national validity of the DLI remains to be explored, its international spread provides opportunity of using it to evaluate and compare educational programs based on inclusive approaches to EOL care encompassing professional and lived experiences, such as the Scottish End-of-Life Aids Skills for Everyone (known as EASE) (Patterson et al 2022) or Last Aid (Mills et al 2020). Such studies would add to the understanding of how death literacy might be developed on the individual and collective level.…”