PCW Associates

Find out more about the role of a PCW Associate …

• Associate membership of Palliative Care Works  More Less

  We have reviewed the role of Associate members of Palliative Care Works and hope to attract a variety of people from health and social care backgrounds in UK and abroad to this important position.

  An Associate member is someone who shares the aims and ethos of PCW to support the development and delivery of palliative care worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.

  The Associate role is flexible and diverse. Associates will not have the commitment and obligations of Trustees but will make a valuable contribution to the work and future direction of the organisation.

  Associates will be kept fully informed of the work of the Board and their views will be actively sought using the means of communication most suitable for the Associate. e.g., emails, SMS messaging, WhatsApp, video calls etc. Some Associates will live and work in countries other than the UK

  An Associate might be invited to join a sub-committee of the Board where their expertise would be particularly useful

  Associates may be active or recently in practice and so bring up-to-date clinical input. They may be based overseas and have knowledge of the general and health systems of countries or regions where PCW may be active.

  An Associate may have skills in education that will enhance the work of PCW.

  There will be opportunities for Associates to contribute directly by helping develop resources such as clinical information fact sheets or to participate in teaching, for instance developing and delivering (usually virtually) a specific module within a course.

  Associates will play a valuable part in bringing knowledge and understanding of PCW’s work to the wider health and aid community in the UK and worldwide.

  Associates will be invited to actively participate in the annual PCW Conference either in person or virtually and, in addition, an annual Associate/Trustee virtual meeting will be arranged. PCW Trustees may also take up the invitation to become Associates upon retiring from then Board.

  Board of Trustees, Palliative Care Works.
  December 2023

• Inaugural online meeting of new PCW Associates and Trustees  More Less

  Edited version from the address given by George Smeardon on May 10th 2024

  Introduction and Background to the Associateship Initiative

  Hello everyone and thank you very much for joining us today.

  I’m George Smerdon, chair of Palliative Care Works (PCW) and it’s my great pleasure to welcome you all to this inaugural meeting of PCW Associates and Trustees, the first of many we hope. We’re enormously grateful to you, our new Associates, all amazing palliative care champions, for joining us and we’re very excited about working and collaborating with you all as we take this initiative forward.

  However, I’d like to start by paying tribute to you all for the dedication, commitment, compassion and sheer hard work that you bring to your work, often doing so in difficult and challenging circumstances particularly where palliative care is neither understood nor the need acknowledged and where training is not supported.

  Thank you all for giving up your time today to join in this meeting. I know that some Associates and Trustees are at work and not able to join us although some have said they might be able to come and go depending on work commitments.

  Background to the PCW Associateship.

  The Associate initiative grew partly out of our thinking about planning for the future and partly out of a desire to recognise important relationships that had developed over the years. We have always had a few Associates but we now wanted to connect with a variety of people, friends and colleagues like yourselves from different health and social care backgrounds who shared our values.

  PCW is evolving and in a changing world, we recognise that how our Training, Mentoring and Consultancy work is offered and delivered needs to be reviewed. Our traditional model of 5 day on site courses, based on our PC TOOLKIT and TRAINER’s Manual, remains core but clearly there is a need for a mixture of online as well as face to face work.  We are developing new skills around online teaching and learning, some of which has already been done in conjunction with friends and colleagues like yourselves and can be developed in collaboration as we learn from each other.

  Over the years we have been fortunate enough to work with many of you on training courses that we have delivered and subsequent mentorship. Through the Associate initiative we now have this opportunity to formalise some of those relationships and establish a network of like-minded people. A network where the experiences of some of the successes and challenges around training, developing and delivering palliative care could be shared.

  What do you as Associates bring:

  You bring passion without which nothing is achieved. We share that passion.

  Passion is one thing but leading by example is vital. You bring expertise and experience. You have all gone to impressive lengths to improve your skills and acquire new ones, not only through training courses but also often through rigorous higher education and academic study.

  Many of you have become skilful educators in your own right, delivering ongoing training programmes in your own settings, cascading knowledge and skills and we can all learn from those.

  It’s also important to recognise that most of you are active in work or only recently retired so bring valuable up to date clinical knowledge and skills as well as the invaluable experience gained from caring for people, both the sick and their carers and indeed each other.

  You also bring valuable local knowledge, of which specific as well as general cultural awareness plus an understanding of what’s happening in your local and national health and social care systems is crucially important enabling us to tailor and plan our training courses appropriately. Please keep those insights and that advice coming.

  Having you join as members of the teaching team is something we are keen to expand.

  And of course you bring a hugely rich cultural, personal and professional diversity from which we learn and which we celebrate.

  PCW Trustees’ role.

  What can we do for you? Well, in these difficult times we are here to listen. It’s really important to share the successes and achievements of what you do. We want to know. It’s also important to share the challenges, frustrations, sadness and even anger that you feel in the course of your work.

  We all know how helpful a listening ear can be.

  We need to let you know what the Board is doing and we can do this by circulating a short report after each of the three monthly meetings. I haven’t mentioned anything specific about our work today as our next meeting is in a month’s time so that will bring you up to date.  Please let us have your thoughts and ideas about how you see PCW evolving and from time to time there will be specific things we’d like your views on. Many of you will know that Fiona Rawlinson whom many of you will know through her department at Cardiff University, has been looking at the impact our training  and would still be keen to hear from you especially, as I say, as we look at different models of teaching and learning in today’s world. She presented on this at our last Conference.

  We have subcommittees and please let us know if you’d like to join. I’m thinking particularly the education and Conference ones. Again, you’ll hear about those from the Board meeting notes.

  I’ve mentioned our annual conference and not only are you cordially invited but also invited to present. Many of you have in fact already done so and we are very grateful. BUT always looking for new experiences to be shared as I posted on WhatsApp yesterday. Replies to Michael Minton please.

  And finally, PCW is happy to coordinate the Associate group, mainly using the WhatsApp group but again collaboratively and as always open to suggestions.

  So exciting times ahead! Thank you for your attention