End of life care and wellbeing for the nursing and midwifery workforce

The following programme will provide the participant with resources to support the delivery of end of life care to the dying person, their family and carers.

We also address the identification of the use of self-care mechanisms for the nursing and midwifery workforce, introducing coping strategies to promote self-health.

The programme will introduce you to a set of resources which provide flexible and accessible learning resources which can be revisited at any time and accessed for their learning and development.

This is a developing resource and more learning will become available over time.

This resource is free for everyone to access, however, if you are not an RCN member, you will first have to sign up for a free 'contact' account here. RCN members should login using their existing details.

If you have already signed up for the programme, you can access it here (and bookmark this page for future use).

Access the end of life programme

User feedback

"I really loved the fact that it was so short and easy to assimilate. It has improved my knowledge in working with the end of life unit. "

"I had very little knowledge about the topic and about how to behave with the dying person and their family. ..and this module definitely provided me with that. A very well structured module with a lot of tips from personal and professional experiences."

"The podcasts in particular were very informative and a brilliant way to share learning material."

"I found this course incredibly helpful for providing end of life care to my patients."

When navigating the end of life programme, please use Google Chrome and not Internet Explorer.

Please note, due to the time taken for the Learning Management System to refresh its userbase, it may take up to 20 minutes after your first login to access the course.

The aims of the programme are that upon completion of this programme the participant will be able to:

1. Recognise the needs of the dying person and their family and carers to support dignified end of life care;

2. Identify and use self-care and coping strategies to promote self-health and well-being for the nursing and midwifery care workforce.

Participants will achieve the following learning outcomes at the end of the programme:

For Aim 1, at the end of the programme students will be able to:

Recognise and act upon the signs of deterioration in a person at the end of life;
Identify and apply decision making tools to prepare a person and their families for end of life;
Identify and apply relevant legislation and ethical frameworks underpinning advanced care planning;
Identify and apply the principles of sensitive communication styles and effective interpersonal interaction;
Understand and use different methods of undertaking difficult conversations at end of life;
Recognise and support the needs of families and carers of the dying person;
Recognise, assess and treat common physical and psychological symptoms at the end of life (breathlessness and noisy respirations, cough, delirium, anxiety, fear and agitation, fever, pain, hydration);
Understand the bereavement support systems in place for families and carers of the deceased patient

For Aim 2, at the end of the programme students will be able to:

Identify signs of self-anxiety and stress
Identify different coping mechanisms (healthy and non healthy);
Develop and apply a range of self-care mechanisms
Identify what further psychological support may be required and how to access it.

The RCN value your feedback on our resources and would appreciate you filling in the short evaluation form at the end of the module. This will enable to add relevant practice based content to the resource and ensure updates for to provide the most current evidence based educational resources.