End of life care and wellbeing for the nursing and midwifery workforce

We’re currently reviewing this course to ensure it provides the best possible learning experience. During this time, it will be temporarily unavailable.

Thank you for your patience—we’ll have it back online soon! If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact onlinelearning@rcn.org.uk.

We also address the identification of the use of self-care mechanisms for the nursing and midwifery workforce, introducing coping strategies to promote self-health.

The course will introduce you to a set of resources which provide flexible and accessible learning resources which can be revisited at any time and accessed for their learning and development. 

This is a developing course and more learning will become available over time.

When navigating the end of life course, please use Google Chrome and not Internet Explorer.

Please note, due to the time taken for the Learning Management System to refresh its userbase, it may take up to 20 minutes after your first login to access the course.

The aims of the course are that upon completion of this course the participant will be able to: 

1. Recognise the needs of the dying person and their family and carers to support dignified end of life care;

2. Identify and use self-care and coping strategies to promote self-health and well-being for the nursing and midwifery care workforce. 

Participants will achieve the following learning outcomes at the end of the course: 

For Aim 1, at the end of the course you will be able to:

• recognise and act upon the signs of deterioration in a person at the end of life;
• identify and apply decision making tools to prepare a person and their families for end of life;
• identify and apply relevant legislation and ethical frameworks underpinning advanced care planning; 
• identify and apply the principles of sensitive communication styles and effective interpersonal interaction;
• understand and use different methods of undertaking difficult conversations at end of life; 
• recognise and support the needs of families and carers of the dying person;
• recognise, assess and treat common physical and psychological symptoms at the end of life (breathlessness and noisy respirations, cough, delirium, anxiety, fear and agitation, fever, pain, hydration);
• understand the bereavement support systems in place for families and carers of the deceased patient

• identify signs of self-anxiety and stress
• identify different coping mechanisms (healthy and non healthy);
• develop and apply a range of self-care mechanisms 
• identify what further psychological support may be required and how to access it. 

The RCN value your feedback on our resources and would appreciate you filling in the short evaluation form at the end of the course. This will enable us to add relevant practice-based content to the course and ensure updates to provide the most current evidence based educational resources.