End of Life Care

Following the development of an “individualised care plan” for the dying patient and in reaction to the newly launched “Five Priorities for Care”, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust commissioned Onclick to write and develop a bespoke elearning course on “End of Life Care”.

This is an area that for many hospitals can find challenging and often receives the most complaints due to lack of training.

Although other in-depth, national resources were available, MTW required a bespoke bite-sized resource, targeting key local issues and suitable for all staff across the Trust.

The aim of our online tool was to support staff with useful information and effective techniques that will make a real difference for patients and their families at this difficult time.

Overall we wanted staff to build their confidence in end of life care, understand the key considerations, be able to practice effective communication skills and learn how to correctly use an individualised care plan.

Working in partnership with the End of Life Care Clinical Specialist, Neve Mann, we focused the structure of our course around the five priorities of care:

Priority 1: Recognising the Dying Phase
Priority 2: Communication
Priority 3: Involvement
Priority 4: Family and Carer Needs
Priority 5: Individualised Care Plan

When considering the design of the course, we strongly felt it would be inappropriate to include images of patients or families for such a sensitive topic. We therefore decided to illustrate the course using symbolic landscape imagery and associated graphics that reflected the progression of life. Each of the priorities were characterised by a season and colour scheme.

Our natural theme was used throughout the course to evoke a positive, safe and comforting environment for users.

Building staff confidence was at our focus; we therefore felt it important to incorporate a range of common staff FAQ’s and tips from fellow peers. To illustrate this, we conducted a photo-shoot with a range of staff at the hospital. Alongside this, we included a variety of user interactions, including drag and drop activities, reflective exercises and form-filling simulations.

A key objective of the course was to arm staff with useful communication techniques when dealing with both patients and their families. We produced an informative video with MTW’s Palliative Care Psychotherapist and Ethicist, Ann Munro, leading staff through the SPIKES protocol stages. Here we integrated Ann’s interview with clips from an end of life care role-play demonstrating the useful techniques for “breaking bad news”. We later developed animated caption overlays to pull out key information for staff.

The end product was a concise and informative elearning module to support all hospital staff at MTW with End of Life Care.

Elements of the course including video clips and graphical posters have been made available through other means at the Trust use within the working day.

As a topical issue in many NHS Trusts, we feel that this course would effectively work in other hospitals. Please speak to our team about a customised version of this course for your Trust.

If you are interested in a version of our “End of Life Care” elearning course for your NHS Trust, please get in touch with our team for a full demo: info@onclick.co.uk

Developing the right tone and level of information to make the content meaningful within an online course can be a complicated and exacting task. Kat and the Onclick team bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and enthusiasm to the job. They work quickly, flexibly and efficiently, and put sound research into their input. Key to this is their willingness to work alongside clinicians to understand and craft the resource, whilst not being overbearing or rigid. It was a quick, responsive service, geared to the needs of the customer and I would recommend them unhesitatingly for a fast, first class and professional service.

Ann Munro

Palliative Care Psychotherapist and Ethicist, MTW

From the start it was an absolute pleasure working with Kat and her colleagues at Onclick. I first met Kat to discuss the storyboard for our End of Life Care e-Learning package. She had clearly researched the subject prior to our meeting and had a very sound understanding of what the latest initiatives were.

Between herself and Mark, they developed a fantastic theme for the package based on beautiful graphics and grasped that this subject area needed sensitive and appropriate images that didn’t convey morbidness nor over optimism. They achieved this with ease.

The team were extremely flexible with meeting times and venues. The hospitality in opening up their office for repeated meetings was very much appreciated. They were also able to work to a very tight deadline.

Their experience with techniques to maintain the student’s interest through an elearning package was brilliant and meant that multiple formats and styles were used with the content of the package.

I would highly recommend Onclick services and would work with them again willingly.

Neve Mann

End of Life Care Clinical Nurse Specialist, MTW

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