HOSPICE EDUCATION LEARNING PARTNERSHIP - HELP IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

ABSTRACT

St Christopher's Hospice and Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice established HELP in 2019 to respond to the learning needs of end-of-life care professionals in South East London. This already successful partnership was mobilised during the pandemic to meet the demands of the clinicians asthey dealt with the significant increase in people dying from COVID-19 and this poster explores the themes that emerged by undertaking this work. Initially a whole scale digital pivot was required as the pandemic hit moving all existing education activity online utilising tools such as Zoom for live teaching and providing asynchronous, self-study opportunities using an online learning platform to ensure professionals could continue to be upskilled during this time. An innovative example of this was the development of a fully asynchronous product on Nurse Verification of Expected Death, a clinical need that grew exponentially during this time. The HELP team provided two bespoke webinar series, which responded to clinical needs and was developed in collaboration with a range of clinicians who were able to provide case studies and examples to secure the learning. The first webinar series in April 2020 focused on two distinct areas, supporting GPs and supporting colleagues in care homes. The team provided weekly care homes webinars and additional ECHO sessions for them. The positive feedback received resulted in further consultation to design the second wave webinar series in November which was open to all professionals in the region and included topics continuing the conversation around wellbeing along with the opportunity to contextualise dying during COVID-19 and highlighting the value of joint working during this difficult time. This poster explores this range of activities that were undertaken during the pandemic and focuses specifically on the values that underpin the approach including the need to be responsive and flexible, collaborative, current and contextspecific in the design of these learning opportunities.