Ms Alyson Gundry1,2
1Paediatric Palliative Care Service, Children's Health Queensland, South Brisbane, Australia, 2Quality of Care Collaborative Australia (QuoCCA), South Brisbane, Australia
Biography:
Alyson Gundry is Allied Health Clinical Lead in the E-Paediatric Palliative Care Service, a service component of the Paediatric Palliative Care Service (PPCS), at Queensland Children’s Hospital. A social worker by background, Alyson held the role of Bereavement Coordinator in PPCS for eight years. Alyson is also an Allied Health Clinical Educator with the Quality of Care Collaborative Australia (QuoCCA), a national project delivering paediatric palliative care education to clinicians caring for young people with palliative and end-of-life care needs. She is committed to enhancing clinicians’ capacity to care for young people with life-limiting conditions, their families, and communities.
Abstract:
Background: Across healthcare sectors, there is increasingly, much-needed focus on the integration of tailored self-care resources and education for clinicians. This is especially pertinent for nursing staff caring for young people with life-limiting conditions and their families. With a complexity in healthcare requirements, young people with life-limiting conditions, may need frequent and protracted inpatient stays with ward-based staff working closely with patient and family. Safeguarding staff’s well-being delivers sustainable care to patients and consequently, clinicians feel better-equipped and supported in providing responsive end-of-life care now and into the future.
Aim: This presentation will describe a regularly delivered, ward-based, and bespoke educational program focused on a triad of learning attributes, namely head (understanding the nature of palliative care), heart (delivering compassionate care) and hand (practical skills and self-care tools). Each element is designed to encourage nursing staff’s well-being when caring for young people at end-of-life.
Method: This educational offering was delivered by a cross-discipline team of clinical educators. Educators committed to offering routinely scheduled and ward-sanctioned sessions with the intention of reducing potential barriers to staff attendance. With competing clinical demands for patient care never-ending, prioritising well-being requires support from nursing leadership to safeguard attendance. Using a mixed-method evaluation, participants’ feedback post-session has been collected, with a view to demonstrating the broader applicability and sustainability of the Head, Heart, and Hands program.
Results: Early findings are encouraging and have been utilised in curating content for the program's resumption in 2024.
Conclusion: By delivering a tailored education program, addressing the support needs of inpatient nursing staff in the provision of paediatric palliative care, it is envisaged that staff will be better equipped to walk alongside a dying young person and their family. The head, heart and hands components integrated into this educational offering are fundamental in the provision of compassionate palliative care.