We have created a Community of Practice for newly qualified nurses to help lay the foundations for the rest of their nursing career. The aim is to help nurses master the principles and practice of palliative and end of life care, so that we can create a growing cohort of nurses to support patients approaching the end of life and their families, throughout their career.
We’ve been able to establish the community, thanks to the support of Dr Tyrrell Evans and his daughter Isabel. In March 2020 retired nurse, Siân Evans, Tyrrell’s wife and Isabel’s mother, died aged 69 after many months of care and support from St Christopher’s. Read their story here.
Grateful for the exceptional care the whole family received, Tyrrell and Isabel decided they wanted to create a legacy for Siân. They set up a fund to support nursing education and training in palliative and end of life care.
The next session is on Monday 26th September 4pm – 6pm – Topic: Palliative Chemotherapy
Over the course of monthly sessions, members of the community can expect to achieve:
Nurses working in any setting, up to five years post qualification or registration. Newly Qualified Nurses working in hospices, the community, acute sector, primary care and care homes.
Maaike leads the session and different speakers are invited to each session to cover a particular topic
Maaike graduated from the KATHO (Roeselare, Belgium) in 2002 as a general and mental health nurse. She started her professional career working on mental health A&E units in Belgium and then moved to Aruba (Caribbean) where she worked on a mental health A&E unit and the local prison. After working there for 3 years she moved back to Belgium and continued working in A&E and Nursing Homes.
Maaike moved to the UK in 2006 and has since worked in Nursing Homes and Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice where she developed a palliative care service for care homes and then also developed and established an education department. Maaike has experience of working in palliative care, mental health, dementia, prison, care homes and education and has completed various post graduate education including a PGCert in Higher Education and a MA in Education.
Maaike has previously been seconded to the University of Greenwich as a senior lecturer and now works for St Christopher’s Hospice as Senior Educationalist where she alongside her senior leadership role leads on curriculum development and delivery.
This community will provide opportunities for shared learning, continuous development and pastoral support for a national network of newly qualified nurses including, we hope, you. It will provide you with an introduction to the art and science of nursing in end of life care, and the principles of palliative and end of life care
Nurses in the community will be expected to develop and co-design the 10 monthly two-hour sessions which will feature input from professionals and experts by experience.
At the end of the first year, in the autumn of 2022, we will host an in-person event at St Christopher’s CARE celebrate the achievements of the community and to remember Siân Evans.
If you have any questions about this or any of our other courses, please contact the Education team who will be happy to help
At St Christopher's, a registered charity, it is important for us to maximise any surpluses to reinvest in the objectives of the charity.
Unfortunately, the manner in which we undertake our training currently means we are not able to invest as much of our surplus as possible, therefore from the 1 December 2017, St Christopher’s Education Centre will charge VAT at the standard rate on our training courses, the reason for this change in pricing is twofold:
i) We want to be able to reinvest any surpluses made from training back into all of our charitable objectives rather than only Education
ii) We want to be able to reclaim the VAT on costs relating to developing and running the training courses