Palliative Medicine for Health Care Professionals MSc

Cardiff University

This multidisciplinary programme is designed for healthcare professionals wishing to advance their knowledge of the management of patients with non-curable and terminal illness.

The MSc in Palliative Medicine for Health Care Professionals provides high quality distance education for clinicians working with neonates, children and adults in many different settings in all parts of the world.

At the core of its design and delivery is the desire to improve patient outcomes wherever palliative care is practiced by its students and to enhance the quality of palliative care through research and quality improvement.

Using the palliative care approach as defined by the World Health Assembly in 2014 (WHO 2014) is an increasingly important imperative for health care professionals throughout the world in order to meet the palliative care needs of their populations. Although cancer as a burden of disease remains an issue globally, there are rising numbers of patients, including neonates and children, with palliative care needs from other conditions. These include learning disability, dementia, frailty and elderly people with multiple co-morbidities.

The vision of the course is to improve patient care by delivering accessible, effective education through which we aim to support health-care professionals to develop, share and extend their knowledge, understanding and application of evidence based medicine, best practice and governance frameworks in palliative care appropriate to their own professional settings.

The taught stages (years 1 and 2) cover the core understanding, frameworks, challenges and research evidence relevant to optimising and developing the practice of palliative medicine and palliative care. The MSc (year 3) provides the opportunity for students to identify an issue of importance in their own practice and carry out an evidence based project intended to contribute to knowledge and practice in palliative medicine and palliative care.

Distinctive features

The course covers the palliative care needs of patients regardless of diagnosis, recognising the global need for palliative care knowledge and skills. Students are taught in a multiprofessional group – sharing experiences from their roles.

Our online course materials include interactive quizzes, reading materials, audio podcasts and short video clips to widen access to learning and make it more engaging. The course work offers a variety of assessments enabling you to demonstrate the application of knowledge gained into your own practice and particular work setting. In addition to reflective writing, there is an opportunity to design a poster around an area of symptom control, write opinion pieces and share ideas around effective teaching of palliative care topics. The face to face days during the Diploma stage offer opportunity for case based discussions, ethical debate, team building, teaching skills review, project management , critical appraisal, basic research skills and 2 days are set aside for communication skills training.

Since 1989 we have aimed to recruit and deliver education to the global palliative care community. Alumni of the course have held such positions as the National Clinical Director for End of Life Care for NHS England, the CEO of Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance and have developed and lead palliative care globally (for example, Bosnia, South Africa, India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Nepal).