Specialty
Palliative care

Educational technique
Combining ongoing structured and flexible learning approaches to palliative care

Details
As patient autonomy and patient care continue to emerge as important themes in advanced illness and palliative care, Imperial College Healthcare keeps abreast of these and other changes through education, both for undergraduate medical students and postgraduate doctors.

All staff need to be able to communicate honestly and openly with patients, to elicit their views and wishes for their treatment and place of care. Care of patients with advanced and chronic illness is a growing part of today’s doctors’ workload, and it is to facilitate this care and broaden access that teaching is delivered.

At Imperial College Healthcare, a small and dedicated palliative care team invests up to 300 teaching hours each year, implementing a multifaceted approach to learning. By providing targeted teaching to both undergraduate medical students and postgraduate doctors, palliative care teaching has become an intrinsic part of the learning undertaken by medical students and healthcare professionals alike.

Areas of study in palliative care for undergraduates include:
• Symptom management MDTs delivered through lectures, log book exercises, and e-learning modules in conjunction with the Trust’s rehabilitation team
• Blended communication skills and living with advanced disease course, delivered through seminar discussions and log books during an oncology attachment
• Diagnosing end-of-life and end-of-life strategy, delivered as a series of lectures and in conjunction with the communications skills team at Imperial College London

Teaching in palliative care for postgraduate healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and any other profession is also tailored to learning needs and levels of experience.

This programme includes:
• Regular compulsory seminars for junior doctors covering pain management and care of the dying, three times annually
• Study days for general practitioners covering acute aspects of primary care such as care of advanced illness at home and care of the dying at home
• Work-based teaching, seminars and ad-hoc training on pain control, care of dying and bereavement. These teachings can be requested at any time and from doctors of any grade
• Ward-based teachings and regular refresher training for doctors and nurses
• Induction teachings upon beginning work with Imperial College Healthcare
• Formalised group-based courses on palliative care for healthcare professionals from any background, covering all aspects of care in malignant and non-malignant disease and also including on-site interaction at a hospice

Contacts
For more information on the formalised group-based palliative care course, contact the palliative care ward manager directly.

For more information on undergraduate teachings, contact the Imperial College London School of Medicine palliative care administrator.

To arrange internal ad-hoc postgraduate teachings on palliative care for doctors, contact lead consultant in palliative medicine Dr Katie Urch or for nurses, contact nursing team leader Di Howard.