Palliative and End-of-Life Care NUR1140
Module code: NUR1140
NFQ level: 9
ECTS credits: 10
Commencing: September 2025
Cost: The fee for this module is €1,250.
The University does not refund application or registration fees for professional development courses, however, students can defer their registration to the next available sitting, except in the case of micro-credential courses where there is no availability for a deferred entry.
Closing date: August 30th 2025, or earlier if this course is oversubscribed.
Module aim
This module is aimed at practitioners who are in regular contact with people who have palliative care needs such as those with chronic or life limiting illness. This module aims to provide the student with the knowledge and skills to identify and manage people’s palliative care needs from diagnosis of a chronic or life limiting illness to end-of-life care in a variety of healthcare settings.
Who should apply?
The module will be of interest to those working in primary, secondary and specialist areas, and aims to increase the students’ competence in delivering best practice palliative and end-of-life care.
Module content is underpinned by National Palliative Care policy and the Palliative Care Clinical Competency Framework. This module employs a blended learning experience with two full days in DCU and 12 weeks online education which includes lectures, interactive videos, workshops, and discussion forums.
The overall aim of the module is to provide students with the skills and knowledge to integrate a palliative care approach within their practice. The major module assessment involves the completion of a change management assignment. Therefore, students should seek the support of their manager for completing the module and be willing to consider their role as a palliative care champion within their own organisations subsequent to successful completion of the module.
Learning Outcomes
On successful completions of this module, the student will be able to:
- Evaluate theoretical approaches to palliative care, pain, suffering, grief their implications on practice.
- Critically evaluate the assessment and management of pain and other common symptoms physical, psychosocial, and spiritual, for people with advanced disease and at end-of-life.
- Demonstrate a systematic higher-level understanding of the effective use of communication skills to support and enable therapeutic relationships with the person who has a chronic or life-limiting condition.
- Critically explore ethical decision-making at end-of-life for the person, family/significant others and the multi-disciplinary team.
- Demonstrate the ability to integrate a palliative care approach for people with chronic or life limiting illness.
- Critically explore the importance of self-care in environments where staff consistently work with people experiencing dying, death, loss and bereavement.
Delivery
The course will be delivered part time over twelve weeks in Semester 1 in Academic year 2025/2026 (September – December 2025), in a blended learning format. Contact hours include two full days on campus and eight one-hour zoom classes. Please note 100% attendance is required on the contact days. If applicants cannot commit to all the face-to-face sessions, then please do not apply.
Entry Requirements
TBA
Please Note: Applicants may not apply to take more than 30 credits of micro-credentials.
How to apply
For information on how to apply for this micro-credential, please visit our Application Guide.