New platform seeks to ‘connect’ palliative care nurses across nation
LONDON: Nurse specialists in palliative and end-of-life care are being brought together to share their expertise and advance their knowledge, in a bid to “strengthen and build” the speciality.
Hospice charity St Christopher’s has launched a new national learning and networking online platform, titled Palliative Discovery, for clinical nurse specialists (CNSs) working in this field at an advanced level.
Two nurses behind the project, Maggie Bisset and Marie Cooper, said the ambition was to reach around 600 CNSs this year.
Explaining what led to the launch of the network, Ms Bisset said she hosted a conference in 2019 for nurses involved in palliative and end-of-life care and there was “such a unified voice that there is a real concern about workforce, and many teams can’t recruit and retain their specialist nurses”.
She said there had not been enough “serious thought” put into the “complexity of the role and what it takes” or focus on workforce development for this group of nurses, although she added there was work now happening on this nationally by NHS England, which the Palliative Discovery team is feeding into.
In addition, Ms Bisset noted how, unlike the medical workforce, nurses in palliative and end-of-life care were “not connected as a speciality”.
“Because of that lack of connection, we’re a bit of disparate workforce and fragmented,” said Ms Bisset, who is a nurse consultant in palliative care at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.
“So it’s really hard to get a position on anything that comes up that should be relevant right now. You couldn’t actually go out to the whole population of specialist nurses working in palliative care to say ‘what do you think, does this speak to you or doesn’t it speak to you?’
“You can’t connect with everyone, and so some of our power, some of our knowledge, some of our real depth of understanding that’s clinically embedded, is never shared.”
She also noted how “the dying system is changing”, and therefore the skills and knowledge needed of palliative and end-of-life care nurses was evolving.
“There’s not a great deal of evidence base that we can rely on,” she added.
“So the learning that we need to do together as specialist nurses, we need to really start to think about the complexities we face now, and how to actually work and improve care for dying people right now, not 20, 30 or 40 years ago.”
Palliative Discovery aims to address some of these issues by providing workshops and offering a platform for CNSs to engage and network.
Ms Cooper, project lead for celebrating palliative nursing at St Christopher’s, said there were “three stems” to the content, which has been developed with the input of more than 240 nurses.
These include traditional online classes from 12 minutes to an hour for nurses to update their knowledge on a range of clinical topics.
There are also roundtables bringing together CNSs and experts to discuss “contemporary” issues such as frailty at the end of life, substance misuse and dying, and remote consultations.
The third element is focused on the CNSs’ personal development and wellbeing and exploring “how do you sustain and allow yourself to turn up every day in a resourceful and healthy way at work”, explained Ms Cooper.
In addition, Ms Cooper said Palliative Discovery would facilitate a “community of practice” where CNSs can “connect and ask questions of each other”.
She said the platform was for any palliative or end-of-life care nurse working at an advanced level of practice irrelevant of titles.
“Titles at the moment are a bit in flux, some people are CNSs, some nurses are ANPs (advanced nurse practitioners),” noted Ms Cooper.
“We want every nurse who is working in palliative care at an advanced level to feel that this is their home.”
Ms Bisset said the ability of these nurses to connect and gain “mutual support” from each other across the UK would help to “strengthen and build the profession”.
Nurses working in palliative and end-of-life care had a “special role” that needed to be “seen and heard and valued”, she added.
“It’s almost akin to, you remember who your midwife is, you remember your first schoolteacher, and in a family, people remember who their specialist nurse was who supported them at the worst of times. There’s one chance to get it right,” she said.
“And so, it’s a really unique and special role and it really, really matters to the health and welfare of this country.
“So there’s a bit of civic responsibility in this role that we really want to endorse and take seriously and not apologise for. It’s an ancient role, it’s a timeless role, and I think that needs to be seen and heard and valued.”
The project to date has been funded by The Burdett Trust for Nursing and it is free for CNSs to register to the platform in 2022. The team will be seeking further sustainability funding for the future.
Underpinning Palliative Discovery is the Lantern Model, the contemporary model of end-of-life nursing launched by St Christopher’s last year.
