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Course delegate
Our Compassionate Care with Namaste study day is based on the principles of the Namaste Care programme. Developed in the USA, the programme mixes compassionate nursing care with individualised activities for people with advanced dementia.
Building on the meaning of the word ‘Namaste’ – to honour the spirit within – we’ve adapted and extended the programme so that it’s also appropriate for people with a broader range of conditions: those who are frail and elderly, locked-in, agitated or anxious.
Registered Nurses, managers of hospital wards and care homes, Health and Social Care Support Workers and Care Home Activity Coordinators.
Course tutors:
Sarah Guyan has practiced bodywork for over 15 years, initially training in massage, reflexology meditation and shiatsu. This interest in complementary therapies motivated her to travel throughout India, Nepal and Central and South America, exploring different practices within these traditions. Sarah’s interest in Eastern medicine inspired her to volunteer as a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) apprentice in a South London practice whilst attending university to gain a degree in Chinese Medicine Acupuncture. She returned to India to volunteer at an acupuncture clinic near Calcutta after completing her degree.
Sarah worked in private practice before joining St Christopher’s. She leads the team of Complementary therapists, has developed a drop-in acupuncture clinic and delivers bodywork to patients, family members and carers. Prior to this career change, Sarah was a senior manager working with children and young people with challenging behaviour.
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.
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.
Attendees on this one-day course will learn the key elements of this multi-dimensional programme that includes physical, sensory and emotional elements, with the single aim of improving and enriching quality of life.
As part of this study day we also focus on Compassion, Empathy, Kindness. This means looking at compassion and its crucial role in successful social interaction as well as examining the important differences between empathy and compassion and how understanding these can have a positive effect on our working life.
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