Palliative care study helps you develop the attitudes and knowledge to care for patients and families living with a serious, life changing or end-of-life illness.
This specialisation focuses on providing relief from the symptoms, pain, physical and mental stress of a terminal diagnosis, as well as caring for your patients’ and their families’ emotional needs during this time. It also involves helping patients to understand their choices for medical treatment.
A parallel focus of the courses also recognises 'self-care' as an important component of interdisciplinary teamwork in caring for patients at this stage of care.
Some studies have even found that palliative care can help extend lives, keeping a patient alive for as long as possible with the best quality of life.

Our lecturers are regarded as experts in their fields and our active research programmes provide a wealth of information.

You can study palliative care in Postgraduate Certificate in Health Sciences or Diploma in Health Sciences in Palliative Care or a Master of Nursing.
Areas of study include:
- Assessment and management of symptoms
- Child and adolescent palliative care
- Cultural issues in end-of-life care
- Ethics in end-of-life decision-making
- Holistic management of care philosophy
- Societal attitudes to death and dying
- Spirituality, loss, grief and bereavement and many more topics particular to palliative care
The courses also recognise ‘self-care’ as important for the team caring for people with life-challenging illness.
You will gain an advanced theoretical understanding and practical skills that could make you a role model and leader in this field. The skills you learn in postgraduate study in palliative care give you the foundation to further study at masters or PhD level. There are many job opportunities with increasing demands for specialists.
Courses in this subject are offered in both distance and flexible-learning formats.