Public Health Palliative Care Training for members of the MDT

Public Health Palliative Care for palliative care clinicians

This course is delivered weekly for 8 weeks, 1.5 hours per session by Dr Julian Abel. From 15.01.26-05.03.26

Public health palliative care has been a field of increasing international interest over the last 25 years. Many of the answers to the problems outlined above can be found in the theory and practice of public health palliative care. Death, dying, loss and care giving is everyone’s responsibility. Whilst professional services and support are necessary, they are not primary. Context is everything in death and dying. Death is not a single biological process that happens when somebody stops breathing. It is part of life, at all stages of life and everyone has a role to play. How this is done is local, cultural and individual. Love, laughter and friendship is key, more than meeting needs and symptoms.

Redefinition of palliative care is needed, with changes to both clinical practice and service delivery. How this can be done can be conceptualised in the new essentials model of palliative care.

It is not just that attention is needed to change the way in which specialist and generalist palliative care is needed, communities and the civic areas outlined in the compassionate city charter need to be seen as centrally important. Furthermore, it is not just that these areas need specific focus, it is how they all work together. Death and dying does not happen by institution or place, but through the experiences of all involved in the multiple places in which events unfold.

Short Course Training Programmes in Public Health Palliative Care

Foundation Modules

The programme starts with 4 foundation modules that must be covered in order to progress to the short course for palliative care specialists and those in training to become a specialist. The first four 90 minute modules are:

1. Why is public health palliative care needed?

1. The biology of communities

1. What matters most. Circles of care

1. Power relationships – Communities, services and third sector organisations

Palliative Care Clinicians

This course has 4 further modules:

1. Compassionate community clinical skills.

Public health palliative care practice is applied across the whole system, including one to one clinical consultations and the functioning of the multidisciplinary team. Through case studies the principles of the previous sessions will be put into practice.

2. Health promotion, harm reduction, early intervention.

This module will look at the principles of public health applied to palliative care, paying particular attention to the practice methods of new public health.

3. Positive and negative outcomes.

Traditional methods for assessing success of service provision are largely deficient when thinking about how best to consider the complexity of the experiences of death, dying, loss and care giving. A more coherent model will be discussed, suitable to service delivery assessment as well as research.

4. System change and service redesign.

A whole system approach is needed and tackling the problem of institutional resistance is critical in the journey of change. Practical models of how to do this will be discussed and applied.