Free course

START DATE	Start anytime
MODE	Online
DURATION	2 hrs

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Lead academic

Michelle DiGiacomo

Associate Professor

Michelle is the Course Director of the postgraduate palliative care program, with the Faculty of Health at UTS. She has a background in psychology and behavioural health and teaches into communication and psychosocial wellbeing subjects.

Michelle is particularly interested in research involving the experiences of family and friend carers of people with chronic and life-limiting conditions. She applies this to designing, delivering and navigating health and social services for priority populations, including healthcare workforce capacity strengthening.

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This free course is designed to enhance health workers’ understanding of palliative care and the ability to talk about it with people affected by a life-limiting condition. You will learn to recognise opportunities and have conversations that can support people to live as well as possible, for as long as possible.

About this course

This is a free, self-paced online course.

For some people, the words ‘palliative care’ make them think of dying - and soon, from cancer, and in a hospital. They may avoid talking about palliative care for fear of causing upset. Even health professionals may shy away from the topic or may not fully understand the potential of palliative care to support people and their families. Avoiding this topic can leave people feeling afraid, without choices and unable to get the help they need.

This free course will increase your understanding of the goals and purposes of palliative care, while dispelling some common myths. Using case studies, videos and interactive activities, you will learn how to talk about palliative care, respond to people’s feelings about it and elicit what is most important to them.

Key benefits of this course

This course has been designed to:

Equip you with information about the scope and opportunity of this model of care
Strengthen your ability to support others’ understanding of the potential of palliative care
Develop your skills in navigating initial conversations and responding to emotion.

Course structure

In this free online course, you will engage with a variety of interactive and self-paced activities designed to support your learning. The following content will be covered:

Palliative care – what is it and busting myths
Navigating communication about palliative care
Supporting with compassion: responding to emotion in palliative care.

By the conclusion of this course, you should have gained:

Expanded understanding of the potential of the palliative model of care to improve people’s quality of life
Ideas for how to begin conversations about what is most important for people with a life-limiting illness
Greater confidence when having these conversations with patients, their families and other health professionals, as well as responding to emotions
Information that you can adapt to any setting, regardless of whether you’re a health professional, a family member of someone with a life-limiting illness, or just curious!

Learning outcomes

This free course will provide the opportunity for you to engage with the following learning outcomes:

Ability to understand what palliative care can offer
Ability to recognise opportunities to start conversations about palliative care
Ability to have conversations about palliative care and respond to emotion.

Contact us

For any questions about the course content or progression, please email pc_masterclasses@uts.edu.au

Who is this course for?

This course is suitable for anyone looking to enhance their understanding of palliative care and ways of talking about it with others. It is well-suited to health care workers across health, aged care and community settings, including, but not limited to:

Nursing
Allied health
Medicine.

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