Abstract
About this talk
Background: Preparing nurses for specialist practice in palliative nursing requires more than the delivery of academic content. It requires thoughtful curriculum curation that enables learners to understand cancer and non-cancer illness trajectories, common symptoms and complications, and the physical, psychosocial and family impacts of serious illness. As module lead for serious illness management in an advanced diploma in palliative care nursing programme over two years, I reflected on how authentic clinical experiences could be integrated into classroom learning to strengthen learners’ understanding of person-centred and holistic care.
Objective: To reflect on the educational approaches used to integrate authentic clinical experiences, multidisciplinary expertise and interactive learning into serious illness management, and to explore how these experiences shaped my understanding of specialist palliative nursing education.
Educational Approach: The module was deliberately designed to connect clinical knowledge with real-world practice. Faculty and guest speakers from diverse specialties, including oncology, radiation oncology, nephrology, surgery, respiratory medicine, critical care, palliative care, geriatrics, neurology and advanced nursing practice, were invited to share their clinical expertise and anonymised patient case examples. These cases illustrated how person-centred, compassionate and humanistic care can be provided across the illness trajectory, including upstream in the course of serious illness. Interactive approaches, including case discussions, role play, didactic questioning and mentimeter activities, were incorporated to encourage participation, reflection, clinical reasoning and application of knowledge to practice.
Reflections: Learners particularly valued anonymised patient case examples, which helped connect disease knowledge with the lived experiences of patients and families. Exposure to diverse specialists also reinforced the multidisciplinary nature of palliative care and the contribution of different professional perspectives to holistic care. Clinical pearls shared by tutors provided memorable perspectives beyond textbook knowledge, including reframing the biopsychosocial-spiritual model towards “joy instead of suffering” and emphasising the need to be practical in delivering affordable care for patients with serious illness. As an educator, the experience highlighted the importance of viewing learning through the learners lens—to understand their difficulties, questions and curiosity, while recognising their diverse levels of experience. While facilitating learning for others, i also found myself becoming curious again and reconnecting with my passion for palliative nursing.
Conclusion: Leading the serious illness management module has been an enriching and reciprocal learning journey. It reinforced that effective specialist nursing education extends beyond content delivery. By connecting knowledge with anonymised patient case examples, learners can better appreciate how clinical expertise and compassionate palliative care come together to provide holistic, person-centred care for patients and families.
Keywords: Palliative Nursing Education, Serious Illness Management, Curriculum Development, Experiential Learning, Multidisciplinary Education, Person-Centred Care
Speaker
About the speaker
