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Welcome to the MSc in Supportive and Palliative care
-Distance Learning
Faculty of Health and WellbeingSheffield Hallam University
Introduction
The MSc Supportive and Palliative Care is aimed at all health and social care professionals working in the field of supportive, palliative and end of life care, whether generalist or specialist and whatever the clinical setting
Aims of the Course
• The course aims to focus on the needs of the service user in supportive, palliative and end of life care settings, thus promoting compassionate patient-centred practice.
• Offer you a flexible programme of post-graduate study, allowing you to develop your intellectual potential, critical reflection and clinical reasoning skills and improve your ability to evaluate and enhance practice
Is the course for me?• This course is ideal for experienced practitioners providing day-to-day care to
patients in their homes, hospitals, hospices and nursing homes.
• The course allows you to gain an expert understanding of palliative and end of life care and its aims to achieve the best quality of life for patients facing life-threatening illness.
• You also learn how to give vital treatments for their condition. Your studies focus on a holistic approach to symptom management for the patient and also psychological, social and spiritual support for the patient and their family.
• Entry requirements - Typically you need a degree or equivalent in a health or social care discipline. You should be working in a general or specialist area of supportive or palliative care. If English is not your first language, you need an IELTS score of 7.0 or TOEFL or equivalent.
Helping you on your journey – our approach to learning teaching and assessment
Supporting you to study• Our e-learning expertise has been recognised by the awarding of a
national centre of excellence status in this area.• We have designed this course to make it easy to fit around your
work and suit your professional needs. • You complete your studies via distance learning through our online
learning environment allowing you to learn in the way most suited to your personal circumstances.
• You will receive support in making your module choices so that you can tailor your studies to your needs and area of practice, through a mix of core and elective modules.
• If you do not want to study for the full MSc you can study individual modules from this course and gain academic credit towards a qualification. Visit our continuing professional development website for more information.
Core modulesPGC stage• Complexities of Symptom
Management (15C)• Loss Grief and Bereavement (15C)• End of Life Decision Making (30C)
PGD stage• Collaborative Working in
Supportive and Palliative Care (15C)
• Research Methods (15C)• +30 credits of elective (optional
modules
MSc stage• Dissertation (60C)
Elective ModulesExamples of elective modules include:-
• Advanced Communication & Information in Supportive Care (30C)
• Psychology of Cancer Care (30C)• Personalised Study Module (15 or
30C)• Work Based Learning Module (15
or 30C)• Informed Consent in Healthcare
Practice (15C)• Paediatric Cancer and it’s
Management (15C)• Non medical Prescribing+ Selection of other modules from the PG framework
How will I be assessed on the course?
Learning will be assessed via both informal (formative tasks) and formal (summative assessment) means. This will help to ensure that learning and development is seen as progressive, developmental and continuous and is not just evidenced by completion of a summative assessment at the end of the module. There are no formal written exams for this programme but a variety of assessment tasks.
Career progression
The course has been designed to meet the academic and professional development needs of practitioners from a wide range of health care professions, already employed in general and specialist supportive and palliative care both within and outside the NHS / social care services.
Some UK trusts are now indicating that it is desirable for candidates to be in possession of a postgraduate palliative care award or working towards one when applying for employment in the specialty.
It is expected that individuals would progress to positions of greater responsibility and autonomy. Therefore, successful completion of modules and awards will further enhance your employability in politically and professionally significant roles and areas of work and can directly impact on progression in your career.
Student feedbackStudent feedback has indicated that the course is of benefit to their clinical practice:
‘I feel that learning from this course has a tremendous impact on my clinical practice as acute medicine trainee. I have been dealing with end of the life issues in my patients for some time but learning from this module has refreshed and updated my knowledge providing strong theoretical, ethical and legal grounds. I am now more confident in making decisions like DNACPR and other end of life care issues and better equipped to justify these decision based on knowledge of ethical principles, human right act and GMC regulations, all learnt from various learning activities of module with positive feedback from my tutor. I hope that learning will continue to improve patient care as an ultimate goal.’
Student feedback
‘I feel the learning from the course has had a positive impact on my practice; not only has it given me more knowledge and information, but I think it has given me more focus and drive within my work. As a social worker, a sound knowledge of policy does affect outcomes for individuals and I find this a highly valuable thing to be developing.’
Student feedback
‘I feel that this module has given me a heightened awareness of the importance of communication especially in light of recent critical reporting in the media towards end of life care. Furthermore, I will use communication to enhance the facilitation of hope for patients and their families and will encourage this amongst my colleagues. A further impact on my practice is enhanced communication with doctors as discussions about decisions in end of life care with patients are sometimes vague and misleading to patients and so a role for nurses is to ensure patients understand the information they receive.’
MSc in Supportive and Palliative care
‘I have really enjoyed this module. I was concerned that I would struggle as my background is critical care, rather than palliative. But I have found it incredibly useful, both as a way of consolidating my existing knowledge, adding new learning and reflecting on my practice. Roughly 25% of ITU nurses’ work relates to non-survivors, but EoLC is barely touched upon in the Critical Care course which I undertook. Lots of the studies I have looked at for this module suggest that ITU nurses do not feel comfortable with EoLC. I hope to use my work for this module to produce a resource folder for my unit and do some teaching with new starters - I'm no expert, but this module has really made me think about this area of practice.’
Further Questions
http://www.shu.ac.uk/prospectus/course/859/
