Ms Sue Morris1
1St George Hospital, Kogarah, Australia
Biography:
Sue has been a palliative care nurse for over 25 years and has worked in the acute, subacute and community palliative care settings. She has a passionate interest in education and supporting nurses, particularly junior nurses, develop their confidence in providing best practice care for patients and their families experiencing life limiting illness’. Sue recognises her role in providing nurses with resources and opportunities to learn and develop effective & empathetic communication skills is vital for both improving staff satisfaction, decreasing staff burnout as well as improving patient outcomes.
Abstract:
Background:
This e-module was developed in response to feedback from nurses’ attending palliative care education courses at St George Hospital, Sydney NSW. Nurses raised concerns about their confidence in dealing with challenging clinical conversations particularly with patients and their families approaching end of life
Aim:
The aim was to develop a resource covering 4 fundamental communication skills to increase confidence of palliative care nurses in recognising emotional cues and responding to emotion with empathy when discussing prognosis and other difficult end of life care issues.
Methods:
Completed in 2024 with grant money obtained via NSW Health. Palliative Care specialist A/Prof Amy Waters and Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Educator Sue Morris, based at St George Hospital Sydney, developed the online training module ‘communication skills in palliative care’ based on the highly effective, evidence-based approach by ‘VitalTalk’ for use with difficult conversations in serious illness. In particular, the use of structured communication frameworks and tools such as the NURSE mnemonic to help nurses articulate empathy and respond to patient’s emotions effectively.
The module timeframe of 30-34 minutes to complete was designed to fit both the standard organisational inservice timeframe as well as use in personal professional development
Results:
During palliative care week in 2025 the module was launched in collaboration with SESLHD Palliative Care service and Palliative Care NSW. Between May to October 2025 there have been 150 participants complete the e-module which is being hosted via the Palliative Care NSW website.
Conclusions:
The feedback from participants has been extremely positive regarding how the module has been constructed, interactive exercises to learn the core skills and the use of actors to portray common real-life scenarios experienced in the palliative care setting, to enhance learning outcomes.