Teaching palliative care principles to UK nursing home care assistants

Abstract

This paper describes the initiatives that led to a study day for Health Care Assistants in the UK, focusing on the principles and practice of palliative care for practitioners. Topics covered were 'What is palliative care?', 'How can you help patients with pain', 'Needs of the dying patient', 'I don't know what to say', 'Answering awkward questions', and 'Ways of relieving distressing symptoms'. Participants valued the study day and feedback showed that the Health Care Assistants, essentially assistants to qualified nursing staff with minimal or no training themselves, had many vocational and emotional needs that were not being met.

Education and training to enhance end-of-life care for nursing home staff: a systematic literature review

“…The length of the educational intervention, the amount and type of material covered and the timing and frequency of follow-up were not clear. Most interventions were very brief: for example, a 1-hour lecture,15 18 three taught sessions20 or four national workshops each attended once by participants 23. The most extensive input consisted of a study day once a month held over 6 months 28.…”

“…Two studies23 30 obtained patient-related data through case note audit that included: evidence of advanced care plans,23 26 number of unplanned hospital admissions,23 30 do not resuscitate requests,26 30 anticipatory care plans,30 Liverpool Care Pathway,26 30 34 preferred place of death25 and evidence of support for bereaved families 30. Five authors15 16 18 28 31 did not explain how data had been collected. One study obtained data by interviewing bereaved families 24.…”

Training needs of midwifery assistants

“…Swiers (1995) believed that this would also increase the motivation and job satisfaction of qualified staff and improve standards of care. More recent studies from the USA and UK have highlighted the benefits of locally based training initiatives (Ashwill 1998, Thomson & Burke 1998, Dowding & Homer 2000). Although these do not focus on midwifery, they do provide examples of how such training programmes can be developed and operated.…”

Meeting the education needs of the non-nurse registered workforce within the neonatal unit

“…Evidence from other areas of health care that support the role and benefits include the intensive care field (Roberts and Cleary, 2000), Palliative care (Dowding and Homer, 2000;Burack and Chichin, 2001), Nutritional care (Crogan and Evans, 2001) and care of the older person (D'Eramo et al, 2001;Perry et al, 2003).…”