Classroom-based and distance learning education and training courses in end-of-life care for health and social care staff: a systematic review.

Background: Staff from a range of health and social care professions report deficits in their knowledge and skills when providing end-of-life and palliative care, and education and training has been advocated at a range of levels.

Aims: To review the literature related to classroom-based and distance learning education and training initiatives for health and social care staff in end-of-life and palliative care, in terms of their target audience, extent, modes of delivery, content and teaching and learning strategies, and to identify the most effective educational strategies for enhancing care.

Design: A systematic review of the literature evaluating classroom-based and distance learning education and training courses for health and social care staff in end-of-life and palliative care.

Time spent studying on a pre-registration nursing programme module: an exploratory study and implications for regulation.

European Union (EU) regulations require that university programmes are of specified duration. Additional EU regulations apply specifically to university based nurse education, enacted in the UK by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). However, little is known about how much time student nurses spend on their studies.

Researching student absence: methodological challenges and ethical issues.

This article describes the challenges encountered in a research project aiming to explore non-attendance from the perspective of absent students. These students are nursing students in a Faculty of Health and Social Care, but the issues raised here are of wider interest. Although attendance at the sessions monitored for this project is stated to be compulsory, there is typically a non-attendance rate of around 20%.