Symptom Management in Palliative Care

Take advantage of being within a specialist hospice education centre to expand your palliative care knowledge and skills. Learn from professionals in a wide range of disciplines. Deepen your understanding of pain and other symptoms and their treatment. Explore how to care for and support patients with advanced disease or who are dying, their families and the bereaved.

At the heart of good palliative care is the management of pain and its symptoms, so this course will deepen your understanding of effective strategies for the relief of pain and its symptoms. You’ll consider the concept of total pain and the associated notion of suffering. Throughout the course are threaded the 6 Cs: care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment.

You’ll explore the roles and value of pharmacology and the multi-disciplinary team. You’ll learn to critically apply in-depth knowledge to the management of pain and its symptoms in far-advanced cancer and palliative care. You’ll also generate strategies for improving the quality of life of dying patients.

Course content

• Evidence based practice
• The use of opioid analgesia in palliative care
• The management of nausea & vomiting
• Respiratory symptoms & their palliation
• The management of other refractory symptoms
• Total pain
• Suffering