End of Life Education with St Lukes Hospice

Our Education Team are experts in palliative and end of life care. We are dedicated to developing and delivering excellent education and training for our staff, volunteers, and the wider healthcare community, including health and social care staff from care homes and care agencies.

Courses

At St Luke’s, we’re passionate about sharing knowledge that makes a real difference. Our education and training programmes are designed to support everyone involved in caring for people with terminal illness and their families – whether you work in a clinical role or provide non-clinical support.

Through our expert-led courses, you’ll gain practical skills and insights in areas such as end-of-life care, symptom management, communication, ethical decision-making, and emotional support for patients, families, and teams.

We work in partnership with leading organisations, including University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, Livewell Southwest, Peninsula Network, Plymouth University, Plymouth Medical School, and other hospices. This collaboration ensures our training is evidence-based, up to date, and reflects the latest best practice in palliative care.

University modules

We are now offering palliative and end of life care modules in partnership with University of Plymouth at both Level 6 and Level 7 to suit your professional and academic pathway.

The modules are appropriate for health and social care practitioners from a variety of settings and provide the ideal opportunity to share learning through a multi-disciplinary approach.

Six steps + programme

St Luke’s Education Team has developed the Six Steps + programme for care homes, domiciliary and supported living agencies based on the nationally recognised Six Steps to Success approach. This programme includes nine interactive workshops designed to give you the tools and confidence to meet CQC end-of-life care standards and Department of Health quality markers. It also aligns with the National End of Life Care Strategy (DOH 2008) and Ambitions for Palliative and End of Life Care (2015–2020).

Our Compassionate Community

Compassion is at the heart of all we do at St Luke’s, and we understand that it is often the smallest and simplest of things that make a big difference when someone is going through terminal illness or bereavement.

Our Community Development Team are there to encourage community-led initiatives and actions by caring individuals or community groups that help to support people in their own neighbourhoods.

The team give guidance and raise awareness through programmes like Compassionate Friends, Compassionate Schools and Death Positive Libraries, and they support local neighbourhoods to develop their own Compassionate Cafés. They also connect with the wider community by staging, attending and displaying at public events and conferences to increase awareness, working closely with our education, clinical and community fundraising teams.

Apprenticeships

St Luke’s is committed to providing on-the-job learning opportunities to people as well as supporting existing staff in up-skilling. As a hospice, we can offer a number of different apprenticeships and placements to both internal and external candidates ranging from administration to events management, retail logistics to health and social care, roles in finance to leadership and management. We also work alongside schools, colleges and training organisations to provide high quality work placements for young people.

Projects and Partnerships

Here at St Luke’s we believe that end of life care should be readily accessible and available to all, wherever you may be. We work in partnership with a variety of local organisations to create ambassadors for end of life care to improve the quality of end of life care in that community.