End of life care masterclass

Dr. Peter Nightingale: Today's special actually. It's been something that we've been looking at doing for quite a while.

Dr. Bill Noble: This program of education is a partnership between the Royal College of General Practitioners and Marie Curie. We're very grateful for the partnership that we've also enjoyed with Macmillan over this particular program.

Dr. Peter Nightingale: These events have been put together to try and deliver a course in one day that covers key themes in end of life care for GPs. We know we can't cover everything, but we're hoping to deal with important things. And actually we're hoping today is going to be so good that it will open the gateway to further learning in other areas.

Dr. Bill Noble: We've invited general practitioners and we've invited them to bring their practice nurses. We've been able to discuss the latest changes in both practice and policy in the area. And it's a good opportunity for GPs to talk not only to colleagues, but also to educators in palliative care in the community, and also with specialists as well. We've had an opportunity to share ideas and think about what the future of care might be in this area and what needs to be developed.

Female 1: I've come across a lot of nurse practitioners. We've got a lot of end of life patients. We've had the ability to ask questions about patients that we might have encountered to get advice.

Dr. Tseung Hong: It was quite advantageous having a nurse in because they produce a nursing point of view that sometimes the GP didn't see, and the interaction was very, very encouraging.

Professor Rob George: What matters to me really, is getting principals over. So understanding how to manage symptom thresholds rather than the technology of what drugs to use and what doses. You need all of that, but you've got to have that on a skeleton of understanding symptom management. Unless you train, support, and maintain education and learning in primary care then we will never really achieve anything in looking after dying people.

Male 1: The reason I came to the course was to improve my knowledge of end of life care; and I feel it’s really useful actually in terms of how I can best approach these problems. Feeling that I know what I need to do in some of the more tricky situations.

Woman 2: Three of the workshops so far and I don't know that I could choose between them on which has been more useful. I particularly found the GMC presentation really interesting and clarifying. I wish I'd heard all that long ago really.

Woman 3: This goes absolutely hand in hand with end of life care.

Woman 2: I'll certainly be encouraging my colleagues to look out for this course and come on it, because I think there is so much that they can gain to take back straight away into their clinical practice.

Dr. Bill Noble: I'm hoping that these events will just be the start of a program of education, collaboration between Marie Curie, Macmillan and The Royal College of General Practitioners.