Caring for and supporting people approaching the end of their life can be considered a challenging aspect of work for ambulance crews.

In reaction to the new NHS Ambitions, South East Coast Ambulance Service were keen to add to their existing online suite of courses, with a bespoke elearning resource on End of Life Care.

The overall aim was to provide ambulance clinicians with the right knowledge, skills and techniques for delivering effective and confident end of life care, making a real difference to both the patient and their family at this difficult time.

This was a to be delivered to a tight timeframe, compatible for iPad use, with fully bespoke content and visuals to meet the service’s unique needs.

Working alongside SECAmb’s End of Life Care Lead, Shirmilla Austin, Onclick structured and developed instructional content for five bitesize training modules.

This allowed staff to complete the material in small sections, at a time convenient for them around their busy schedules.

  • Module 1: Introduction
  • Module 2: Communication
  • Module 3: The Law
  • Module 4: Last Years
  • Module 5: Last Days

We wanted to be sure that the subject was visually approached in a sensitive manner. We therefore conducted a day’s photoshoot at a volunteer patient home to collate supportive and positive imagery of staff and patient interaction.

To further humanise the material, we put together a full video demonstration of communication techniques. This was later edited to include animated captions, highlighting each of the key principles of good communication.

It was vital to get staff to take time out and consider some of the more difficult the topics with reflective exercises. To embed key messages, we felt it was important to the mix delivery of learning, combining a variety of user interactions, such as spot the mistake games, drag and drop activities and real-life case study examples.

A team of staff were used to illustrate the course and guide the user through the topics. We therefore conducted an initial photoshoot with the crew and created illustrated course guides, which can be recycled in future SECAmb elearning projects.

This was a rapid project with a 3-month turnaround for platform construction, video production, photo-shoots and elearning development. SECAmb have had brilliant feedback from the course from participants, 345 people have taken it so far, of which 95% stated that their understanding had increased and 85% said that the course had changed their practice.

Onclick Testimonial

Onclick and Kat in particular were brilliant and helped us to produce an outstanding End of Life Care elearning package for Ambulance Clinicians. They were integral in helping us make such a brilliantly received package, not only did they do all the production but they helped us to write the content by harnessing our clinical views and experiences into case studies and content for the programme.

Shirmilla Austin

Clinical Development Team, South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust

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