Mandatory training

Not mandatory but we have clinical skills courses for palliative care.

To be honest there is so much mandated I'm not sure if nurses would have time for additional training as well.

On 6/16/2019 at 10:04 PM, 123mememe said:

I think it could improve palliative care generally but I would worry about people not engaging fully because they have to attend rather than choosing to attend. I wonder if it would drop the compliance rates for mandatory training if staff aren’t released to attend.

I worked in A&E and see no benefit to me or my organisation with mandatory palliative care training. If a palliative patient attends then I would expect some form of care plan to come with them and I don't mind following that but what am I going to do in the 4 hours they are in ED?

ETA, There is enough nonsense that is mandatory without adding something that I would never use.

2 minutes ago, 123mememe said:

https://www.rcem.ac.uk/docs/College Guidelines/5u. End of Life Care for Adults in the ED (March 2015).pdf There is a drive to improve palliative care in ED and the need for people’s perceptions to change. You would be managing symptoms and having discussions with families so patients aren’t undergoing unnecessary investigations or interventions.

That is not your original topic. You were talking about mandatory training for palliative care. This is end of life care which is slightly different and ED's should already be doing this.

I still stand by my point that I am not going to make any great differences in the 4 hours that people are in ED. (And yes, I did work in a major trauma centre that consistently meets the 96% 4 hour target - and sometimes the 98% target).

4 minutes ago, 123mememe said:

End of life care is an aspect of palliative care and the principles remain the same. Do you have any training in communication skills / breaking bad news? There is more emphasis on improving quality of life in palliative care.

"There is more emphasis on improving quality of life in palliative care."

Again, what does this have to do with ED? The care plan should be in situ before the person reaches ED and we should work to that.

End of life care is different because that can be a sudden catastrophic event that places the patient into that category. My department embraced the Liverpool care pathway because we found it the best way to deal with these types of patients. We followed it correctly and involved family in every step of the way - we had a small ward area that was part of ED that we used to look after these patients.

After 35 years of nursing I have given far too much bad news to too many people.