Course

Welcome to Parkinson's: managing palliative and end of life care.

This course was produced by the Parkinson's Excellence Network. 

It was reviewed and updated in August 2021. 

It has been designed for professionals, such as Parkinson’s specialist nurses and other clinicians, who work as part of the specialist team during the palliative and end of life phases. It may also be useful for health and social care professionals who already have experience of working with people with Parkinson’s, but wish to enhance their knowledge of palliative and end of life care in Parkinson’s.

The purpose of this course is to enhance your understanding of palliative and end of life care in Parkinson’s and to guide you through this journey alongside your client and their carers.

It aims to improve the outcomes of this journey for all involved by encouraging early conversations about advance care planning, and the need to make decisions about treatments the client may or may not wish at the end of their life.

This is a badged course which will take no more than 10 hours to study and means you can gain a digital badge compatible with Mozilla Open Badges upon successful completion of the course. The course is divided into five sections. 

As you progress through the course, there will be some reflective exercises. These are important to help you think about your past practice and consider if you might be able to improve this in the future.

There are quizzes at the end of each section, allowing you to assess what you have learnt. At the end of the course there is a final quiz which is a review of all the sections. You will gain a digital badge if you get a pass rate of at least 65% in the final course quiz.

You must click the 'Enrol' button to be able to do the quizzes and earn the badge. You can find out more about the Parkinson's: Palliative and End of Life Care badge on the Course and badge information page.

Details of everyone involved in producing and funding this course can be found on the Acknowledgements page.


To enrol on this course, sign in first then click on the 'Enrol' button. 

If this is your first visit to this site, you need to register for a free account via the 'Sign up / Sign in' button. Please open it in a new tab or window, follow the instructions to register an account then once your new account is created, return to this page in your browser rather than following the 'return to the page you were on' button in the registration screens, and login via the 'Sign up / Sign in' button, then click on the 'Enrol' button for this course. 

By enrolling on this course you consent that your name, email address and grades are made available in the course data reports to a third party course owner, Parkinson's UK (non-Open University), who has signed a declaration confirming they comply with the General Data Protection Rules for data handling. Please see the Terms and Conditions of Use and Privacy Conditions for OpenLearn Create (in Help and Support) for further details about how your personal data is protected by The Open University and third party data controllers.

This course was launched in September 2017. It should not be seen as a substitute for clinical reasoning nor should it be used as a substitute for expert advice.

Extensive effort has been made to ensure this course is as accurate as possible at the time of production, however the accuracy and completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed.

The course should therefore be used as a guide, with no medical decision being solely made on the information provided.

Particular thanks and appreciation go to the J. Macdonald Menzies Trust, which provided the funding to enable the development of this learning programme and this course.

Next course review: August 2023

Other courses

You may also be interested in the following further courses:

1. our intermediate level course for Parkinson's Specialist Nurses and other clinicians with a knowledge of Parkinson's. For further information click Parkinson's: Managing bone health and fracture risk.

2. courses on our Learning Hub.