Education and training Archives - Page 2 of 3

Our new hospice plans have received a boost thanks to a generous grant

March 16, 2022 | 10:04am

The ambitious project, which will see our current outdated building on St Ann’s Road North replaced with a purpose-built modern facility on land adjacent to our current site, has been awarded £250,000 by the Foundation to create a specialist Centre for Palliative Care Education on the development.

The bespoke training suite, supported with funding from the Wolfson Foundation, will be the only non-university healthcare training suite in the area with integrated technology and capacity to simulate real life scenarios, allowing experts from St Ann’s to share their specialist knowledge with other organisations and help drive excellence in the palliative and end of life care sector both locally and nationally.

We’re hugely grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for this generous contribution to our new building. The training suite is a hugely important part of the project and will be a real hub for education and excellence when it comes to the provision of palliative and end of life care.

The Centre for Palliative Care Education will also contribute to the long-term sustainability of the hospice as a valuable source of additional income, as we share our specialist world-class knowledge with others, and also invite external parties to use the facilities to run their own training and development. We also hope it will become a useful hub for local community groups and other service providers from around the area.

It’s vital we create this new purpose-built hospice that will serve the needs of our community both now and in the future.

Local people deserve the very best facilities when receiving care or spending time with their loved ones, and our current building – which is more than 100 years old – is no longer fit for purpose. If we don’t build this new facility there’s a real risk we’d need to close services in the near future, so the generosity of organisations like the Wolfson Foundation is vital to ensure we can continue to provide care for generations to come.

We’re so excited that this project is progressing at pace, and we are looking forward to starting to build later this year. We are currently appealing for other organisations, businesses or individuals who feel they may also be able to support us as we create Greater Manchester’s new hospice to get in touch. We’d love to hear from you and have you join us on this exciting journey.

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive of the hospice

The new hospice building will also comprise a 27-bed inpatient unit, including 21 en-suite bedrooms with access to private outdoor terraces. The development will feature modern outpatient and day therapy services, dedicated bereavement and family support spaces, offices, a coffee shop which will be open to the public, landscaped gardens, and improved car parking.

The new building has been designed with the environment in mind, being ecologically efficient, using the latest green initiatives including a green roof, PV panelling and grey water solutions. The car park will have electric charging points and plentiful room for bicycles.

The Wolfson Foundation is an independent charity with a focus on research and education. Its aim is to support civil society by investing in excellent projects in science, health, heritage, humanities and the arts. Since it was established in 1955, some £1billion (£2billion in real terms) has been awarded to more than 12,000 projects throughout the UK, all on the basis of expert review.

St Ann’s have long provided high quality end of life care and this admirable project will allow the hospice to provide that care in an excellent environment. We are particularly pleased to be supporting the education centre which will support brilliantly trained staff to serve, not just in the new hospice, but across North West England.

Paul Ramsbottom, Chief Executive of the Wolfson Foundation

Find out more

For more information about our plans for the new hospice and how you can support it please click the link below.

Click here

Free training for care homes this winter

December 28, 2021 | 10:00am

The free online training will explain the principles of symptom management, explore common symptoms people can experience and recognise practical steps that staff can take to help manage these symptoms.

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive of St Ann’s Hospice, said: “The pandemic has put the invaluable role of care and nursing homes in the spotlight, and we know it can be difficult for staff to sometimes recognise the signs of when someone may be approaching end of life, or why that might be an important thing to do.”

As experts in palliative and end of life care, we recognise that the part care and nursing home staff play in the support of residents as they approach the end of life is incredibly important. This training will hopefully give them tools and knowledge to help ensure that the people they are caring for receive the very best possible support, and that those around them can also be prepared.

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive at St Ann’s

“At the hospice, we’re committed to improving palliative and end of life care across Greater Manchester and beyond. We know the difference holistic, collaborative care has on people’s experiences, and we also advocate conversations to ensure that an individual’s wishes can be listened to and hopefully delivered.”

The training is available in a number of slots in January and February 2022, with the hospice also offering additional free sessions online or in person for teams who aren’t able to make the scheduled dates.

Rachel added: “There’s always such a huge importance placed on how people are born, but people’s experience at the end of their life is just as important.

“When thinking about end of life care, I always think about how I’d want one of my own loved ones to be treated, and that really motivates me to ensure we can carry on providing world-class care, whilst also sharing that specialist knowledge with others in the health and social care community.”

To find out more, or to book a place on the free training session, visit www.sah.org.uk/community-training or call 0161 498 3645.

Community palliative and end of life care training

Free online training for community-based health and social care providers, including care and nursing home staff.

Click here

St Ann’s new training for community-based care providers

September 9, 2021 | 8:00am

A magnifying glass with an eye inside, and the words 'recognising dying' underneath

The free online training will cover an introduction to palliative and end of life care, as well as the signs that indicate someone may be in the last year or last days of life.

It will also help identify ways to support people as they near end of life, and advise on ways that staff and carers can also ensure their own wellbeing during what can be a challenging and mentally difficult time.

The training is available in a number of slots throughout September, October and November, with the hospice also offering additional free sessions online or in person for teams who aren’t able to make the scheduled dates.

The pandemic has put the invaluable role of care and nursing homes in the spotlight, and we know it can be difficult for staff to sometimes recognise the signs of when someone may be approaching end of life, or why that might be an important thing to do. As experts in palliative and end of life care, we recognise that the part care and nursing home staff play in the support of residents as they approach the end of life is incredibly important. This training will hopefully give them tools and knowledge to help ensure that the people they are caring for receive the very best possible support, and that those around them can also be prepared. At the hospice, we’re committed to improving palliative and end of life care across Greater Manchester and beyond. We know the difference holistic, collaborative care has on people’s experiences, and we also advocate conversations to ensure that an individual’s wishes can be listened to and hopefully delivered.

Rachel McMillan, Chief Executive of St Ann’s Hospice

Rachel added: “There’s always such a huge importance placed on how people are born, but people’s experience at the end of their life is just as important.

To find out more, or to book a place on the free training session, visit www.sah.org.uk/community-training, email Siobhan Kenyon at skenyon@sah.org.uk or call 0161 498 3645.

Care Home Training

Get more information about the training and watch a short animation about how to recognise dying on our training page.

Find out more

Free online training sessions

August 26, 2021 | 10:31am

We’re hosting 50 webinars throughout our 50th anniversary year, focusing on a different theme each month.

Themes covered include some of the less known areas of death, dying and bereavement, as well as care for people with dementia, and ways to support individuals with learning disabilities.

To view the free webinars, visit www.sah.org.uk/50-free-webinars/ or for more information please contact Abby Evans on 0161 498 3616 or email aevans@sah.org.uk.

If there are any other topics you think would be helpful, we’d encourage you to get in touch too.

There are so many professionals in Greater Manchester and beyond who work with people with life-limiting illnesses – whether in hospitals or other clinical settings, care homes, homeless hostels and a whole range of other areas too. At St Ann’s we’re very experienced in providing training to others, whether to help them understand when people may need access to specialist palliative care, to help aid communication, or simply to improve systems and processes. We’re really excited about these sessions, and are thrilled so many people, whether they work in a clinical setting or not, are accessing them already. We’re really passionate about sharing learnings and encouraging others to ask questions and find out more. People are often scared of the word hospice, but lots of the areas we train are relevant to other fields too, for example advanced communication skills. We’re always pleased to help should people be interested in learning more about palliative and end of life care, and we’d love as many people as possible to engage with the free webinars.

Jude Edwards, Head of the hospice’s Practice Development Centre

St Ann’s education and training

We’re committed to providing high-quality training and education, to help support your professional development and improve patient care in your area of work.

Take a look at the training on offer

St Ann’s Training Programme 2020

January 23, 2020 | 3:07pm

We’ve launched our training and education programme for 2020, featuring a range of courses that will enable health professionals across Great Manchester to benefit from its extensive experience of delivering the highest standards of palliative and end of life care.

Highlights for 2020 include a two-day Anxiety Management Training course, running on 23^rd and 24^th March, which will be delivered in conjunction with Positive Energy Partnership Ltd. This is tailored towards healthcare professionals who may already have a basic knowledge of anxiety, and while the emphasis will be on palliative care and progressive conditions much of the content will be transferable to other patient groups where anxiety is a feature.

New for 2020 is a one-day Introduction to Cancer course, which is taking place on 15^th June. Previously this has been run for the hospice’s staff, but this year it will be open to clinical and non-clinical staff from other settings who wish to build their understanding of cancer terms, treatments and how the illness progresses in patients.

For anyone interested in the science of sleep there is an Assessment and Management of Sleep in Palliative Care course on 14^th July. Subjects covered will include how sleep changes with ageing, the different types of insomnia and an introduction to assessment approaches and treatment options that have proven efficacy.

Sharing our knowledge and experience is one of our greatest passions at St Ann’s. This year’s schedule of training and education courses has been devised to reflect the key topics in palliative and end of life care at the moment, such as anxiety and sleep, as well as helping healthcare professionals to refresh and expand their skills. We also have a range of course formats to offer flexibility, so alongside the one and two-day courses we will be running shorter sessions like our monthly Lunchtime Bites, which are three-hour courses focusing on subjects like dementia and end of life, grief and bereavement care, symptom control and palliative care emergencies. Lunch is also included to make it easier for attendees to fit these into their working day. All of our courses are open to clinical and non-clinical staff from various care settings, for example, the 20th May Hand Massage and Hearts course is perfect for anyone working in a caring role in a hospice or hospital, care home or in people’s homes.

Jude Holt, Head of Practice Development

Interested in attending one of our training courses?

For further details about our training courses click below or please contact Abby Evans, Education and Project Support Officer, on aevans@sah.org.uk or 0161 498 3616.

Click here

Lucie appointed as a Trustee of the British Lymphology Society

January 21, 2020 | 4:32pm

Lucie Casserley, a Physiotherapist based at our site in Little Hulton, has been a Lymphoedema Specialist for four years and works in our Lymphoedema Team. The British Lymphology Society is a body that provides support for those involved in the care and treatment of people with lymphoedema and related lymphatic disorders.

I am very excited to have the opportunity to get involved in the very valuable work that the BLS does to advance knowledge in the field of lymphology. Improving the expertise and skills of professionals caring for people with lymphoedema is something that I’m very passionate about and I’m looking forward to supporting the BLS in its drive to do this, for example by sharing information about the work that we do at St Ann’s with specialists across Greater Manchester and indeed throughout the UK.

The breadth of work that the BLS does is extremely impressive, as well as looking to improve standards of care, it promotes the importance of early access to treatment, early detection and where appropriate screening and prevention. I’m very honoured to have been appointed as a Trustee and am looking forward to helping this highly respected charity to achieve its objectives.

Lucie Casserley

As part of the Lymphoedema Team at St Ann’s Lucie provides specialist lymphoedema care across Stockport, parts of Greater Manchester, Bolton and South Cheshire. The team treats anyone with primary, secondary or venous insufficiency associated lymphoedema and patients with both cancer and non-cancer related lymphoedema. In addition, they also treat patients with lipoedema and lipo-lymphoedema and work closely with patients to promote self-care and management of their condition.

To learn more about the work of the British Lymphology Society and Lymphoedema, visit www.thebls.com.

Are you interested in more news stories from St Ann’s?

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A reason to celebrate

May 14, 2019 | 1:58pm

We have lots to celebrate at St Ann’s at the moment. It’s the 40^th year of our Little Hulton site opening, we’re looking ahead to our organisation’s 50^th in 2021, and making exciting plans to ensure our hospice sites and services remain fit for future generations.

The local communities across Greater Manchester are so generous in their support of our work, and we’re extremely grateful for everything they do for our patients and their families. With only around a third of our funding coming from the NHS, we’re privileged to have been so well supported by local people for almost half a century. Your help really does mean we can care for even more patients than ever before.

Reaching as many people as possible, from as wide a range of local communities as possible, is something that’s extremely important to everyone at the hospice. We work hard to dispel myths around what hospice care is, and what it means for patients and their families. We talk about the care we can offer to both patients and their loved ones right from the point of diagnosis of a life-limiting illness, through treatment and beyond. And we work hard to educate health care professionals in how we can help them to support their patients too.

We were thrilled that one of our staff members, Jude Holt, who is Head of Practice Development for St Ann’s, received an exciting letter this week from the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, and Jon Rouse the Chief Officer of Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership announcing that she has been shortlisted for a prestigious award.

Jude has been nominated for a Greater Manchester Health & Care Champion Award in the Inclusion Champion category, for the work her and her team have been doing to raise awareness of palliative and end of life care with a wide range of local communities.

A large part of this work has been collaborating with Springhill Hospice for the organisation and delivery of an innovative series of lectures, aimed at healthcare professionals and people who work with communities that have traditionally not accessed hospice care, for a variety of reasons.

The series aimed to raise awareness of the issues around palliative and end of life care provision for a range of local populations, whilst providing training and advice on how to better serve patients within those communities. This included people with mental health needs, those who are homeless, in prison, have learning disabilities, are transgender, or have dementia, as well as local BAME populations, travelling families and those with long-term conditions.

This work is so incredibly important to St Ann’s, as we want to ensure that as many people who would benefit from the specialist care hospices provide can do so. Our communities mean so much to us, and we want to continue shouting from the rooftops to ensure patients with life-limiting illnesses – whatever their background or community – know that we’re here to support them.

We’re so pleased that Jude has been recognised for her innovative projects in this way, and we’re excited to see the results of the awards when they are announced in July.

Contributing to our community in a different way

October 16, 2018 | 4:40pm

Community is a very important concept for St Ann’s. We are part of a wide community and every person involved in or touched by the hospice contributes to it, whether that’s our team of staff and volunteers, our patients and their loved ones, or our supporters. We couldn’t continue to provide the specialist care we do without our community, but the care we provide isn’t the only way we contribute.

Training and education is an essential part of ensuring that patient care is the very best it can be, whether that’s at St Ann’s or elsewhere. Jude Edwards manages our Practice Development team, responsible for education and training.

There’s no doubt that the care we deliver is beyond excellent, but I believe that we should be able to offer this to even more people in the wider communities of Greater Manchester, reaching as many people as possible with our services.

We’ve been looking at ways to engage more groups that traditionally, for many different reasons, haven’t felt that hospice care is for them. We’ve been working with the Alzheimer’s Society, homeless communities in Manchester, the prison service and with transgender groups. We’re aiming to improve awareness, demystify hospice care, and improve access, and we were pleased to be recognised in a recent report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for our outreach work.

A large part of the work we do is around in-house training for all nursing staff. This includes everything from breathlessness management, nutrition and spirituality. We also develop and deliver training and education for people outside of the hospice who provide palliative care, such as in nursing and residential homes, and home care teams. We’ve also been leading dementia awareness training which has become increasingly important for those working in the healthcare sector. It’s great knowing that we’re making a difference, both to those professionals and their patients.

Jude Edwards, Practice Development Centre Manager

Another way in which we’re contributing to our community is through student placements. Student nurses from local universities join us for placements of up to 12 weeks in either our day therapy or inpatient units, and we support them with nursing student mentors. We recently started to offer placements to year 12 and 13 students, and we’re thrilled that so many are showing an interest in careers which are based around hospice care.

The experience of our students varies each day, with lots of opportunities to chat with patients, increase confidence and communication skills, and develop an awareness of the importance of psychological support. They’re also actively encouraged to engage in creative therapies and discover their benefits.

Feedback from some of our student nurses shows how beneficial they’ve found their placements:

I have had a great learning experience on this placement and thoroughly enjoyed my time here.

My mentor was very good at discussing ideas and providing me with resources to support my learning.

All staff made me feel like a valued member of the team, respecting my views and opinions.

Trainee doctors can also choose to do a six month placement with us as part of their training, and it’s great for our teams to know that we’ve helped to shape their career, which can impact on the future patient care they then provide.

At a specialist centre, I will see only cancer patients whereas in the hospice I will see a range of other medical conditions, so there’s a broad spectrum. What I like about working at a hospice is that you’re able to look at a patient as a whole person, so as well as the medical and scientific input, you can focus on social and spiritual aspects, and the family side of things, and how all that impacts on a person. There are few medical specialities where you have the time to be able to do that.

Previous trainee doctor

For Jude, seeing the difference we make for the individuals who access – or would benefit from accessing – our care is what makes it all worthwhile.

Though no two days are the same at the hospice, I can honestly say that I really love the work I do here. I’m looking forward to working with my team to make sure our projects continue to help people in the future.

Jude Edwards, PDC Manager