Provision of palliative care education in nursing homes

To map the nature and extent of existing palliative care education activities.

Data was gathered from questionnaires, face-to-face and telephone interviews, visiting palliative care teams across Mount Vernon Cancer Network and attendance at conferences, meetings and seminars. A comprehensive needs assessment for palliative care education within nursing homes was completed.

The findings revealed inequality across the network with regard to education provision and uptake of palliative care services. Recruitment of overseas staff and a transient workforce were both cited as major difficulties in implementing education programmes. Funding of these programmes and responsibility for providing the education remain unclear.

There was a real and urgent need for palliative care training in the network area and there was scope for a variety of approaches to be adopted to deliver the required training.