CPD Points
2 General & 3 Ethics CEUs from CMSA (5 in total)
What is the Holistic Assessment and Palliative Care Planning course about?
Dr Justin Amery, author of the Oxford Textbook on Children’s Palliative Care in Africa wrote: “A child can suffer for many different reasons. A child has many different needs, any of which, if blocked or adversely affected, will cause the child to suffer in one way or another. Now the reality is that, in most African health care settings, we will not have the resources to meet all of the child’s needs, but that doesn’t mean we should not know what they are.” He goes on to say, “Good children’s palliative care planning means hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Without a full assessment and an agreed, achievable and realistic care plan it is very difficult to provide good children’s palliative care.”
This course aims to empower those who work with children needing palliative care to gain the skills and the knowledge that enables them to carry out holistic assessments of children and families and to use the information to develop realistic palliative care plans that, when needed, will include advance care and terminal care plans. The course also provides links to numerous helpful assessment and planning tools and resources that can be downloaded.
Key points of learning within this holistic assessment and palliative care planning course include:
- Holistic assessment as a vital component of good children’s palliative care and future planning.
- How to approach and carry out an assessment of a child and family to ascertain their physical, spiritual, social and emotional needs.
- Raising awareness of available resources and tools to assist in holistic assessment and palliative care planning.
- The differences between palliative planning, advance care planning and a terminal can planning and how they integrate.
- The key elements of a palliative care plan, an advance care plan and a terminal plan.
- How to approach a discussion with the family on goals of care and the value of planning in advance for difficult and emergency situations.
- The value of shared decision making.
- Ways to overcome challenges and barriers to good palliative care planning.
- The steps and processes for developing a palliative care plan, an advance care plan and a terminal care plan.