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Pedagogy students at work

Eighty third-year students have chosen to study the importance of supporting seriously ill children and their families from the pedagogical context.


In the 2020-2021 academic year, the Knowledge Center for Palliative Care for Children has entered into a partnership with the Pedagogy program of The Hague University of Applied Sciences. After all, educational support is an important element in integrated child care. Eighty third-year students have chosen to study the importance of supporting seriously ill children and their families from the pedagogical context.

 

Background

"As a Medical Pedagogical Caregiver, how do you deal with intense events?" - question from a student

Children have their own way of dealing with and experiencing the fact that they are seriously ill. Sometimes they don't get better either. It is very important to do justice to this and to handle it carefully. As an educator, you learn to take a child seriously and help them grow up with possibilities and limitations, taking into account age, developmental level and cognitive ability. The impact of the disease on the parents and siblings (brothers) also deserves the necessary attention. Just like the question of how they can best be supported. The module “Guidance of seriously ill children and their families” offers knowledge and skills to help educators shape the guidance and support of seriously ill children (also in the palliative and terminal phase) and their families, together with other (care) professionals. can give.

Implementation

“What practical and usable resources these students have developed. Nice to attend the presentation!” – expert guest lecturer after the final presentations.

The module was implemented in the period February-April 2021 (block 3). The teaching cycle consisted of 8 weekly seminars with themes such as: Introduction to the theoretical framework of care and support for seriously ill children and their families, Impact of bad news conversation, Communication with child and family, Brussen and emotions, Collaboration with healthcare professionals and practical examples .

In addition, the Network Integral Child Care (NIK) Holland Rijnland collected assignments from the professional field that the students could work with in practice. The end product must be a concrete solution for a bottleneck or gap that fits in with - or serves to improve - the care and support for seriously ill children and their families, with the pedagogical context as the starting point. The product must also be innovative for professional practice. For example, the Medical Pedagogical Care (MPZ) department of the Juliana Children's Hospital in The Hague had the following question: How can the MPZ of the Juliana Children's Hospital support parents to still pay attention to the siblings with their limited time? The students have developed a brochure that can be hung up in the hospital and reminds parents what to look out for in the siblings. They have also developed a flyer and made a first draft of a so-called 'brussenbox', or a box with content to give to parents to support them in their attention for 'brussen'.

Together with practice

“Impressive”, “Come in”, “Life goes on with the practical examples of the theory” and “It's great how you can talk about it so well and openly” – some of the reactions from students.


The lessons were given by experts and experts from the field and by experience experts who shared their stories with the students. In addition, Leandra Beeloo (network coordinator of the NIK Holland Rijnland) and Marjolein Koot (training coordinator for Higher Education Knowledge Center for Pediatric Palliative Care) also provided a lesson and facilitated everything related to the lessons. Two teachers from the Pedagogy program were released to follow the lessons in order to be trained via a train-the-trainer principle to give (part of) the lessons themselves in the next block and to organize matters within The Hague University of Applied Sciences to organise.

Block 4 has started

Block 4 has now started and two groups of third-year students have started following the 8 tutorials and are working on their group assignment and individual assignment of the module. Based on the end products of the students from block 3, a number of assignments have been further refined and a number of new assignments have been added. For example, an assignment from Vilans around the question of how students, professionals (pedagogues, nurses, etc.) and parents can learn together from stories of experience.

If you are interested in including the course “Guiding seriously ill children and their families” in your curriculum, please contact Marjolein Koot at m.koot@kinderpalliatief.nl .


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