At Helen & Douglas House continuous learning is a vital part of our care culture. Our recent Clinical Respiratory Training Day brought together colleagues from across teams to strengthen clinical knowledge, enhance emergency skills, and foster collaboration, ensuring we’re always ready to deliver the best possible palliative care. Here are some highlights:
Expert insight from a new service from Oxford Health
- Sam from the Oxford Health Community Respiratory Physiotherapy Service introduced his new service.
- With many shared patients with complex respiratory needs, collaboration between both services will be key to ensure communication remains effective and to maintain a clear understanding of both services demands and expectations.
- From helping avoid unnecessary hospital stays to smoothing transitions from hospital to home, Sam’s involvement offers vital reassurance and practical support for families.
- Sam will continue to work closely with Harry (HDH Physiotherapist) on how both services will work most effectively together as they develop.
Emergency tracheostomy awareness
Abi and Emma from Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice delivered a session on tracheostomy awareness and emergency care. Currently at Helen & Douglas House we don’t offer overnight stays for children with tracheostomies, however a day visit offer is in place and a broader tracheostomy service offer in the future is being reviewed through a scoping and demand exercise amongst professionals. The session was a proactive step to ensure our clinical team remains safe to assist parents or external health professionals during day visits within our current service offer.
The training covered everything from understanding what a tracheostomy is, to equipment use, suction, and emergency protocols. It also opened the floor for plenty of Q&A’s, giving the team a chance to ask questions and hear from experts in this area.
Alexander Devine and Helen & Douglas House have always worked closely together, and this opportunity further demonstrates the importance of this partnership and sharing our skills between the two organisations.
Simulation and skills in action
As well as informative presentations and tracheostomy care training, we also had skills specific training on non-invasive ventilation, non-invasive ventilation interfaces and cough assist machines. Many children and young people who stay at Helen & Douglas House require these devices, so having an opportunity to maintain our skills in using these safely was an important opportunity.
Simulation training is a growing educational opportunity in healthcare, with excellent documented outcomes on its benefits for staff and care delivered. Each simulation opportunity was based on case studies specific to Helen & Douglas House, with teams working together to respond to complex clinical scenarios.
This was more than a technical exercise – it was about teamwork, communication, and thinking clearly with a systematic approach under pressure. It provided a safe environment to make decisions, test knowledge, and grow from feedback. It additionally offered an opportunity for clinical staff to feedback about the challenges these scenarios pose, and therefore informing future training opportunities.
Hear from our clinical staff about the day
“Wonderfully organised and a superbly delivered day.”
“Very grateful for the level of training, the opportunity for questions and group conversation to enhance understanding”.
“Amazing study day.”
“I had a great day and felt lucky to be given the opportunity to be part of some hands-on training sessions and have talks from several experts on different topics.”
“Loved the simulations.”
“A really well organised day which covered lots of information I didn’t know and delivered in a way that allowed me to ask all the questions I thought were silly!”
The Clinical Training Day was a powerful reminder that the best care comes from collaboration, learning, and practice. We’re grateful to everyone who led, attended, and participated and to those who continue to help us grow as professionals and as a team.
