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Course delegate.
Advance care planning (ACP) is the process of discussing and planning ahead in anticipation of some deterioration in a person’s condition. One of the key elements to support people at the end of their lives is to find out what their preferences and wishes are in relation to where and how they would like to be cared for; ACP supports this.
Highlighted as one of the most difficult areas for health care professionals, advance care planning can greatly help guide patients, families and professionals in decision-making for care at the end of life.
This study day will aim to explore the value of good interpersonal communication skills in the context of what often can be distressing circumstances.
This study day will give you the opportunity to:
The study day is designed for:
Tutors
Deborah Holman has been working at St Christopher’s since 2002 in clinical practice, in care homes and in education. For 8 years prior to this she worked closely with St Christopher’s as a district nurse with a keen interest in caring for people who chose to die at home.
From 2012 – 2019 Deborah, alongside others set up St Christopher’s Personal Care Service and worked as the Registered Manager delivering integrated health and social care in people’s homes to those who were frail elderly, having long term conditions and those in the last year of life.
Deborah has been involved in education at St Christopher’s since 2007 including teaching, training and developing health and social care professionals, volunteers and family members to give high quality care of the dying. She has a special interest in advance care planning and to help people to talk about difficult things in order to understand what matters to each person. She currently works as an Associate Lecturer for the Hospice.
Helen is an Independent Nurse Lecturer specialising in palliative care, end-of-life care and dementia care. Before that she was a Palliative Care Nurse Lecturer and a Practice Development Clinical Nurse Specialist in the Care Home Project Team at St Christopher’s Hospice, London.
Previously, Helen was the Editor of End of Life Journal, the British Journal of Nursing and was Managing Editor of the International Journal of Palliative Nursing.
She is co-founder of a theatre-in-education group ‘Stories That Speak’, which provides communication skills training for people working in palliative care, end-of-life care and dementia care, via drama, role play and personal narratives.
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 the 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 is now seconded to develop an education partnership between the Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice and St Christopher’s Hospice.
Following accreditation in Respiratory and General Medicine and a doctorate on breathlessness, Rob pioneered HIV & non-cancer palliative care from 1987-2003 at UCL Hospitals during which time he established the first NHS Hospice@Home service.
From 2003-2006 he had a portfolio of consultancies working with specialist palliative care services facing various operational difficulties in settings across the voluntary sector, combined NHS and Independent Hospice Services and in NHS posts spanning the community, specialist beds and acute hospitals.
From 2006-2015 he was back in the NHS full time covering the community around Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals in Central London.
In September 2015 he became Medical Director at St Christopher’s, but will continue with some NHS sessions;
As a leader and influencer, he was clinical lead for Palliative/EoLC for London from 2007-13 and is now President of the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland;
He has sat on RCP working parties reporting on aspects of palliative and end of life care and Prolonged Disorders of Consciousness. He advises various Government Departments on EoL matters, the latest of which is as the independent, clinical expert to the LCP Review led by Lady Neuberger. He sits on various ethics committees.
He is a clinical academic, rather than an experimental researcher and before gaining his professorship at the Cicely Saunders Institute, KCL, he was Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at UCL. He has over a hundred and twenty publications.
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