End of Life Aid Skills for Everyone in Scotland

Families, friends and communities have an important role to play in providing informal support when someone is faced with deteriorating health, caring responsibilities, death or bereavement. However, people can lack the confidence, skills and opportunities to offer this support. Public education is an example of a public health approach to palliative care that can help to develop individual skills and knowledge relating to these issues. In Scotland, the Scottish Partnership for Palliative Care (SPPC) has developed a new public education course called End of Life Aid Skills for Everyone (EASE) which aims to enable people to be more comfortable and confident supporting family/community members with issues they face during dying, death and bereavement. The aim was to design a course that imparts knowledge and skills while supporting development of social networks and avoids presenting professionals as the sole repository of expertise in the area of caring, dying and grieving. The intention was also to establish a sustainable delivery model that didn’t rely too heavily on busy palliative care specialists and which had the potential to bring the course to a diversity of communities. This article outlines the development of the EASE course, from conception to delivery.