NNUH nurse wins national awards for End of Life Education Programme

A training project for end of life care, led by Emma Harris, Specialist Palliative Care Nurse, at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital has won two national awards.

Ms Harris was seconded to the ABC end of life project and has spent one day a week leading the Anglia team for the last three years.  The aim has been to improve the training of health and social care staff to support patients with end of life care. 

The project scooped the top award in the multidisciplinary teamwork award and was third in the development award as part of the International Journal of Palliative Nursing Awards 2014. 

Jo Segasby, Director of Women, Children and Cancer Services at NNUH says:  “The Anglia team has overcome many logistical hurdles to provide their programme for staff who have previously received little  training in end of life care, for example staff caring for people with learning disabilities, homeless people and prisoners.”

Emma Harris says:  “I really appreciate having the opportunity to lead on this project and thank my hospital colleagues for their support in allowing me to do this.”

The ABC project brought together a broad mix of different professions for end of life care training sessions, including paramedics, social workers, physiotherapists and health care assistants.  It was funded by the NHS East of England to ensure high quality end of life care is available to all who need it, irrespective of diagnosis or place of care.

The East of England ABC project trained a total of 10,000 staff over the three years with the aim to improve confidence of health care professionals dealing with end of life patients also to reduce unnecessary hospital admissions and more recently the project ran ‘training the trainer’ programmes in care homes in order for the trainers to disseminate the skills to other health care professionals.