The Knowledge Center for Pediatric Palliative Care is developing a new educational module for pedagogues in training about supervising seriously ill children and their families, together with the higher professional education program Pedagogy at The Hague University of Applied Sciences and with close involvement of the professional field.

An educationalist encounters situations in his/her work in which children are seriously ill and sometimes even die from the consequences of the disease. In these situations it is important to support and guide children, their parents and any brother(s) and sister(s) in this process. In the newly developed module, students become acquainted with this special form of supervision and are prepared for this type of work because they are provided with both the necessary knowledge and skills.

Educational module content

Children have their own way of dealing with and experiencing their illness and sometimes they cannot get better. Their reactions will be partly determined by their age, developmental level and cognitive ability. In each phase it is important to do justice to the experience of the child in question and to handle this carefully.

The educational module offers knowledge and skills to pedagogy students to provide the necessary guidance and support for these children and families in the future as a practicing pedagogue - for example working in a (children's) hospital, medical daycare, day center, JGT team or even within education. together with other healthcare professionals.

The module consists of six themes; introduction, impact of bad news conversation, communication with child and family, brusen and emotions, information referral and practical cooperation with healthcare professionals. These six themes form the content of the lectures, seminars and training courses. In the final lecture, the student groups give their final presentations of the practical assignment. Testing takes place by means of a group assignment in combination with an individual assignment.

Collaboration project

In concrete terms, the cooperation project concerns the development of the educational module 'Guiding seriously ill children and their families', an optional arrangement in study year 3 of the Pedagogy program at The Hague University of Applied Sciences with a value of 3 EC (total study load 84 hours), and the implementation of this module. The implementation of the education module will take place in the spring of 2021. A total of 80 students will work with this module.

Throughout the development of the educational module and its implementation, the Knowledge Center for Pediatric Palliative Care facilitates experts and experience experts/parents. In addition, the subject teacher of The Hague University of Applied Sciences will go through a train-the-trainer program from the Knowledge Center for the implementation of education. The Network Integral Child Care (NIK) Holland Rijnland is the client for the final assignment of the students and closely involved in the substantive assessment of the assignments that the students have to make. The Hague University of Applied Sciences is ultimately responsible for the assessment of the student.

A special collaboration from which a separate educational module on the guidance of seriously ill and palliative children (at home) for pedagogy students has been realized for the first time!

After implementation, the Knowledge Center for Palliative Care for Children will also make this educational module available to all other pedagogical follow-up courses in the Netherlands.