Just before Easter, Helena Dunbar, Director of Service Development and Improvement at Together for Short Lives, travelled to Canada to undertake the first leg of her Churchill Fellowship. In this next phase of her travels to Australia, Helena shares her time in Melbourne and her brief visit to Sydney.
The two things I have loved most in my career are spending time with children and their families and education. How lucky was I to experience both in my time in Melbourne.
As part of my action-packed itinerary put together by Melissa Heywood (Clinical Nurse Consultant, Victoria Paediatric Palliative Care Programme). I had the pleasure of spending a day with Jill Carter, Clinical nurse consultant and Lead for the Palliative at Home Service, covering the region of Geelong, Victoria.
First I had to navigate my way to the train station in Melbourne and board their V-line service to Geelong – easy when everything is in English!! After one hour of travelling through the outer suburbs of Melbourne, I arrived in Geelong to be met by Jill. First stop coffee! Have I told you about Melbourne coffee, oh my goodness the best coffee I have ever tasted, don’t know how I will go back to UK brands!
The Palliative at Home Service is a 6 bedded virtual ward in the community for patients requiring access to 24/7 end of life care. Grown out of the community adult palliative care service, which has about 200 adults on its caseload at any one time, the at home service is there to offer intense support for adults when they reach the end of life stage. Over the last 15 years of her career, Jill has grown her interest and passion for children and supported children and families from the Geelong area who have also been referred to the community palliative care service. Most recently she has accepted one child onto her Palliative at Home service team (seven registered nurses and four enrolled nurses) and that was today’s visit. I had a wonderful time meeting the family and their son, even helped Jill with a bed bath.
Whilst recognising community palliative care teams across Victoria work differently, the service in Geelong for children is a credit to Jill and the team who work with her. Supported in the early days by the team at VPPCP, the nurses in the team, led by Jill’s example, have recognised the benefits of using their skills in adult palliative care, overcoming their fears and learning more about the specific needs of children and the value of true collaboration to support the dying needs of a child and their family. I had a wonderful day. Thank you Jill and thank you family X for allowing me to spend some wonderful time with you and your son.
Arriving back safely in Melbourne I just has time to recover before the next day saw me sitting in on a simulation workshop for ED staff – Breaking bad news and facilitating challenging conversations within the ED environment. A mixture of 34 post graduate staff, doctors and nurses came together to learn and share experiences. Melissa has been running this workshop now for seven years with Dr Sinead O’Donnell, Consultant in Paediatric Emergency Medicine at the Royal Children’s Hospital. What a fabulous day preparing staff to cope and deal with the worst events in ED, from breaking news about a chronic condition in childhood to telling a parent that their child had leukaemia, and then finally telling a mother (actor) that her child had died following a drowning episode at a nearby pool where she had just taken her eye off her child for a few minutes!
The programme for the day was a mixture of some theory, helpful tips, with fun activities, role play and SIM experiences. It’s amazing how you can use Lego to demonstrate the value of good communication and movie clips to demonstrate the value of empathy.
We must never underestimate the value of learning like this. This was a truly emotive day, draining and exhausting for facilitators and staff but highly rewarding, particularly when one of the young doctors who had taken part in the final SIM scenario had a traumatic death of a child to deal with on her next shift.
My education experience did not stop there. The next day I was able to learn about and meet some of the educators who are part of the national Quality of Care Collaborative Australia (QuoCCA) project which was set up to deliver paediatric palliative care education to health professionals in urban, rural, regional and remote areas who may care for children and young people with palliative and end of life care needs, so as to improve the quality of palliative care provided to children in close proximity to their home, throughout Australia.
Dedicated educator roles are funded as part of tertiary PPC services in each state (Melissa in Victoria) to enhance workforce capability through education and ongoing mentoring, and build collaborative relationships between the complex network of care providers for children with a life-limiting condition and their families.
I learnt about the range of specific education sessions and e-learning programmes which are delivered across Australia, and also (because of the vast size of the country) their model of Pop Up Education – a one-off education session that is facilitated by an educator, specific to one child and focused on local teams. It is an opportunity for those non-specialists to learn how to cope and care for a child with palliative care needs in their community and improve the confidence of local providers to make sure a family can remain at home, should they wish to. So far Mel has done about 80 pop up sessions across Victoria and into Tasmania! A truly revolutionary way of empowering local teams to provide best possible care to children and families. Pop up bereavement sessions are also offered following the death of a child.
Watch out for Helena’s final blog as she says goodbye to Melbourne and travels to Sydney for her final few days. If you missed Helena’s earlier blogs and would like to follow her three week visit to Canada and her time in Australia, you can read her blogs here:
