An online interactive training course to help educate staff in children's hospices across the UK has been successfully developed because of a partnership between Kingston University and Shooting Star Children's Hospices.

The online course is designed to provide training for staff working in a children's hospice to enable them to start up and establish simulation to support their staff.

The funding of the Simulation Training course in palliative care was through the Seedcorn Innovation Funding Scheme, which is supported by the Higher Education Innovation Fund.

The partnership between Shooting Star, which has sites in Guildford and Hampton, and Kingston University is one that extends over several years and has seen Kingston students work in the hospices on placement, as well as an innovative e learning placement.

Professor of Children's Nursing at Kingston University Jayne Price, who has also been a trustee of Shooting Star in the past, co-led the development of the online training package with Associate Professor in Simulated Learning and Clinical Skills Sally Richardson alongside staff from the hospice led by Rebecca Whiting Practice Education Facilitator.

Professor Price said "Initially Sally and I worked with staff at Shooting Star to set up a face to face train the trainer package to enable simulation workshops within Shooting Star Children's Hospice to be an integrated part of their staff training and support. 

"We presented this at the Together for Short Lives conference in Manchester 2022 it got an amazing reception with hospices wanting to develop simulation to maximise learning and development in their areas in a range of areas from challenging conversations to A-E assessment.

"In response to the interest from the conference we sought further funding to create the interactive online training package so we could help meet the needs raised by Hospices across the UK to learn more about simulation from writing scenarios, to running the simulation with manikins and actors, to the debrief. 

"The online interactive training course – Simulation in Palliative Care was launched in May 2023."

Professor Price also explained how the partnership with Shooting Star and the project fit in with the University's Town House Strategy.

She said: "Having an impact in the wider community is a key part of the vision of the strategy and the work with the hospices will have an impact with children at Shooting Star Hospices and beyond."

Sally Richardson also added that the work with Shooting Star and the interactive online training package has opened up a wider network as she and staff across children's hospices meet four times a year as a network to discuss simulation in palliative care to aid the implementation and development within different hospices.

Director of Care at Shooting Star Hospices Lisan Dennis explained how beneficial the partnership on the project has been.

Dennis said: "Our ongoing collaboration with Kingston University has meant that we have been able to develop groundbreaking ways to educate and train more hospice staff in complex aspects of paediatric palliative care through the use of simulation,"

Find out more about studying Children's Nursing at Kingston University

Find out more about Shooting Star Children's Hospices