Innovation
The innovation is situated in a compulsory second year adult branch undergraduate module Palliative and End of Life Care. The module is designed around 7 typical cases concerned with palliative and end of life care. The cases are used in the taught programme to consider the module syllabus and this culminates in a simulated Multi-Disciplinary Meeting, in which the students present the cases and lead discussion about how to meet the person’s needs. The module is supported by a learning platform (Blackboard), containing resources that enable students to design strategies to meet the needs of the people described in the case presentations, and a conference day which consists of papers from researchers in our Cancer, Palliative and End of Life Care research group. The students’ ability to convey this knowledge is assessed via a conference poster and a professional conversation, which particularly attends to their ability to engage in conversations about palliative and end of life care knowledgeably, sensitively and compassionately.
What prompted innovation?
It is widely acknowledged that student nurses are poorly prepared to care for people with palliative and end of life care needs. When we reviewed our curriculum we therefore included a module in this care. We wanted to ensure that the module enabled students to develop their practice, rather than be directed to theoretical and research knowledge in isolation. The design of the module around typical cases ensures that students can situate their learning in practice, and also that they broaden their understanding of the issues typically encountered when caring for people and their family members
What makes innovation different?
The module has at its heart the aim to enable students to communicate knowledgeably, sensitively and compassionately with people with palliative and end of life care needs. The design around typical cases ensures that this aim is achieved in a clinically relevant way
Changes in practice
The main practice change observed to date is related to the educational change needed to deliver this kind of innovation. This includes designing interactional and experiential learning with up to 200 students, and reducing the delivery of lectures to a bare minimum. We have observed that students are also beginning to think differently about palliative and end of life care
Impact
At the moment our evidence of impact is limited to educational and student evaluations
Dissemination
To some degree this innovation is used in other programmes and we plan to incorporate it into a masters module in the new academic year