End of Life Care for All e-learning (e-ELCA)

 

Professor Christina Faull, Consultant in Palliative Medicine, LOROS Hospice, Leicester UK, and APM National Clinical Lead for e-ELCA, explains how to get the most out of this recently updated end-of-life care training programme. This post relates to a longer article published in the July/August edition of the European Journal of Palliative Care. 

Professor Christina Faull

Waiting for a meeting? Travelling on a train? Or a spare 20 minutes before lunch? Why not open an e-ELCA e-learning session and learn something new?

Created in 2010 and completely updated in 2015, e-ELCA is an e-learning programme aimed at enhancing the training and education of all those involved in providing end-of-life care. It is managed by Health Education England in partnership with the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland (APM). The majority of the content is relevant globally but there will of course be some differences between nations in the availability of drugs and in local policies and laws.

e-ELCA has more than160 e-learning sessions written by specialists in the field of palliative care in the UK and Ireland. The sessions are grouped into subject-specific modules about advance care planning, symptom management, assessment, communication skills and bereavement. Two modules focus on learning for social care, spiritual care and there’s a module that uses case scenarios to help integrate learning. More information about the background and detail of the content can be found in our longer article published in the July/August edition of the European Journal of Palliative Care.

You can register for e-ELCA or if you are not eligible you can purchase it. Thirteen sessions are free to access. Additionally, Recognising the Last Months and Days of Life is available as a sample session. This is a very important session to help doctors and nurses address the significant issues highlighted in recent reports about the quality of end of life care.

You can see further how e-ELCA sessions can support the competencies required to meet the Priorities of Care of the Dying Person report by you or your trainees, students or colleagues completing a Training Needs Analysis.  NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has indicated that e-ELCA sessions are a good way of supporting implementation of the Guideline for Care of Dying Adults in the Last Days of Life.

Many specialists in palliative care are using the sessions within their teaching. For example, for a course about advance care planning (ACP) Introduction to Principles of Advance Care Planning may be used to bring course participants to a common level before attending a study day. This ACP course may also make use of e-ELCA material for discussion within a group (for example How to Negotiate Decisions Which May be Difficult to Implement) and perhaps as a way to consolidate, or to further learning (for example Developing Your Practice: Clinical Supervision and Further Reading). There are tips about how e-ELCA can motivate and engage learners and suggested learning paths or collections of sessions to support staff groups. In addition, e-ELCA sessions have been mapped to the end of life care qualification, especially useful for social care workers. Mapping to the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland Undergraduate Medical Student Curriculum is under way. Keep in touch through the e-ELCA website.

My personal favourite session is Spirituality and Philosophy of End of Life Care. It’s a session that makes me think and reflect even after more than 25 years of supporting people who are dying. The importance of the holistic approach to people in finding themselves is so beautifully articulated through a patient video. A good way to spend those 20 minutes! 

Read the full article in the European Journal of Palliative Care
This post relates to a longer article, ‘End of Life Care for All e-learning (e-ELCA)’ by Christina Faull and Victoria Winlow published in the July/August 2016 edition of the European Journal of Palliative Care (EJPC) (vol. 23.4).  If you have a web-based subscription to the journal you’ll be able to download this issue, plus all articles in the journal archive.

You can also browse the archive and download articles by taking a 10-minute or 30-minute subscription. Members of the EAPC receive discounted subscription rates to the journal – click here to subscribe online.

Look out for another great training opportunity in early October when Dr Sean Hughes and colleagues write about the InSup-C online learning tool on the EAPC Blog.