Hospice teaches skills to care home workers

A Lancashire hospice is spreading its expert knowledge about end of life care further into the community through a training partnership with care homes.

St Catherine’s Hospice, in Lostock Hall near Preston, has been selected by Cumbria and Lancashire End of Life Network to deliver a third round of the Six Steps To Success: End of Life Care Programme to care homes across central Lancashire.

The organisation has already successfully delivered the programme to 53 care homes across the area receiving excellent feedback from the “Six Steps Champions” – staff representatives from each home who completed the course who are now feeding back what they have learnt to their workplace.

St Catherine’s has now been re-commissioned to deliver the course, which begins again later in the year to share its specialised knowledge and expert skills with even more health and social care workers in the area.

Sue Clayton, clinical educator at St Catherine’s, who delivers the training, said: “It is important to spread our skills and widen the reach of the hospice to more people.

“This helps ensure more people can die at home if this is what they choose and ensures peoples’ wishes and preferences for end of life care are met wherever possible.”

Staff from Meadow Bank Nursing and Residential Home, a Bupa care home in Bamber Bridge, near Preston, have completed the course and found it very beneficial.

Six Steps Champion Linda Thompson, clinical services manager at the home, said: “The course has given us information, understanding and confidence around end of life care.

“Now we know more about the things we need to be looking out for, both in the last few days of life and also in the weeks leading up to it.”