Intermediate Communication Skills Training - Having Sensitive Conversations within the Context of Palliative and End of Life Care
Thursday 11th September 2025
9:30 am to 4:00 pm
Online
Who should attend:
Open to all health and social care staff who have sensitive and complex conversations and have already attended an introductory communication skills course.
If you are asking the following questions:
How do I tell someone they won’t manage at home or walk again?
What do I say to someone who asks “Am I dying?"
If so, this workshop is designed to help you identify some strategies and tools to manage these scenarios.
Course Aims:
To explore strategies for dealing with complex conversations so these can be applied to practice.
Objectives:
- To identify what scenarios are difficult in practice
- To review communication skills available in your toolkit
- To state some strategies for handling different types of sensitive conversations
- To reflect on some communication scenarios in practice (video/ case study/ goldfish bowl)
Presented by
Amy Smissen
Lecturer Practitioner and Community Occupational Therapist
Throughout her career she has worked in a range of settings including a community learning disability team, an inpatient neurological rehab unit and a local charity providing support to people living with long-term neurological conditions.
Amy joined the Hospice of St Francis in 2023 and works 3 days a week in the Community Team, bringing her unique OT perspective to enable community patients to optimise their function and ultimately, their overall quality of life. Amy has always enjoyed facilitating therapeutic groupwork sessions, running workshops and training sessions both for patients and carers and with fellow clinicians. These skills lend themselves well to her Lecturer Practitioner role, which she took on in early 2024.
Dee Cooke
Lecturer Practitioner/ Nurse
Dee has worked in a range of settings including a community team, care home improvement team and clinical skills facilitator team.
Dee joined the team in April 2024 and works clinically alongside delivering end of life care education.
Dee is passionate about supporting staff to get it right even in stressful situations.
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