Chairs Dr Victoria Bradley & Dr Mary Miller

Confirmed Speakers
Dr Paul Howard - Consultant in Palliative Medicine - Consultant in Palliative Medicine
Paul Howard is a consultant in palliative medicine at Mountbatten Hospice and St Mary’s Hospital on the Isle of Wight. He has a strong interest in palliative therapeutics, particularly adapting medication approaches to make them suitable for delivery in people’s own homes. He leads the hospice medicines safety and optimisation team and sits on the local and regional prescribing committees. He is an editor-in-chief for the Palliative Care Formulary, focusing particularly on palliative neuropharmacology. He also supports the wider development of therapeutics research, e.g. through Data Safety Monitoring Committee work.

Dr Jeff Hanna, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Dr Jeff Hanna is a Lecturer in Clinical Cancer Nursing, which is a joint clinical academic appointment between Ulster University and South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. Currently, Jeff's workload splits across 60% of research and teaching responsibilities at Ulster University and 40% as a registered nurse in an acute surgical unit at the Ulster Hospital, Dundonald. Jeff's research interests span across cancer care, end of life, bereavement and digital health. He has held previous academic positions at University of Oxford, University of Strathclyde and Queen's University Belfast. Jeff is an editorial advisory board member for the journal Palliative Medicine and the UK Oncology Nursing Society champion for Northern Ireland.

Jonathan Hindmarsh - Advanced Clinical Pharmacist - Palliative and End of Life Care, South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust and St. Benedict's Hospice, inpatient unit for specialist palliative care
Jonathan has worked as a senior clinical lead pharmacist within the NHS for over a decade and is an elected committee member of the Association of Supportive and Palliative Care Pharmacy (ASPCP). He is a qualified non-medical prescriber and an accredited consultant pharmacist with the Royal

Professor Miriam Johnson - Professor of Palliative Medicine, Hull York Medical School
Miriam Johnson is Professor of Palliative Medicine at Hull York Medical School, Associate Director of the Wolfson Palliative Care Research Centre at the University of Hull, UK, Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Manipal Academy for Higher Education, Karnataka, India.
Her interests include mechanisms and management of breathlessness and inequalities in palliative care service provision e.g. for people with non-malignant disease such as cardio-respiratory disease. The projects employ a wide range of research methodologies (clinical trials of drug or complex interventions, qualitative studies, observational, secondary data analysis, data linkage studies) and collaborative partners are involved across different disciplines and countries. For 20 years she was also a consultant palliative physician and set up one of the UK’s first integrated palliative care-heart failure services.

Dr Mary Miller - Consultant in Palliative Medicine, Sobell House - Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer in Palliative Medicine, University of Oxford - Director OxCERPC (Oxford Centre for education and research in palliative care)
Mary qualified from University College Cork, Ireland in 1988. Mary trained and worked in palliative medicine in Ireland, Sweden and the UK and has been a consultant in palliative medicine in Oxford since 1998. Mary has a strong interest in education; completing a Diploma in Learning and Teaching at Oxford University 2005, was Training Programme Director and Regional Specialty Advisor (2002 – 2008) and has led the Oxford Advanced Courses in Pain and Symptom Management since 2005. Mary is an elected member of the Education Committee of the Association of Palliative Medicine and joint lead of the postgraduate education special interest forum. Since the inception of OxCERPC in 2017, Mary and the team are focusing on building an exciting portfolio of courses, building research readiness and reaching out to practitioners across the globe.

Dr Ollie Minton – Clinical Lead for Palliative Medicine and Clinical Director for Cancer – University Hospitals Sussex
I am a consultant in palliative medicine based in Brighton. I am also the national clinical advisor to Macmillan for end-of-life care. My role is to provide clinical leadership to the team which advises other members of the hospital on end-of-life care including their families and friends as well as ensure the wider cancer services from diagnosis onwards.
We are a research-active team and continually look at quality and service improvement and education of staff and undergraduate students of all healthcare disciplines.
We see a split of patients with and without cancer in a 50/50 split but see patients on need no diagnosis or prognosis – the overarching theme is patients who are treatable but not curable, but we want to see people sooner than later when we can have the most impact – part of this is education of staff etc.
It is a privilege to be asked to attend this meeting and continue to highlight the supportive and palliative care needs of patients regardless of diagnosis who are likely to be in the last year(s) of life in whatever setting needed.

Dr. Aidan O'Donoghue - Assistant Lecturer in Nutrition & Dietetics, School of Biological, Health & Sport Sciences
Dr Aidan O'Donoghue is a CORU registered dietitian in Ireland with experience in both medical and surgical dietetics. He undertook a PhD titled 'Early Satiety in Cancer: An Investigation into a Highly Impactful Orphan Symptom' in Trinity College Dublin. This work was among the first major bodies of work to investigate this symptom in oncology. Aidan has a particular interest in nutrition impact symptoms in cancer including early satiety, taste changes and smell changes. He also has an interest in nutritional assessment techniques, having written the appropriate chapter in national guidance documents for dietitians. He is currently an assistant lecturer in Nutrition and Dietetics in Technological University Dublin.

Dr Adejoke Oluyase (PhD, AHEA), BETTER-B Project Manager/Research Fellow
Dr Adejoke O. Oluyase is a Research Fellow at the Cicely Saunders Institute for Palliative Care, Policy and Rehabilitation, King's College London. Adejoke’s research focuses on palliative care (including inequities in palliative care service provision) and breathlessness.

Dr Annie Pettifer - Assistant Professor Adult Nursing, Member of BRHUmB, West Midlands Palliative Care Research Hub
Dr Annie Pettifer is an Assistant Professor within the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Birmingham and the School of Nursing. She is a member of the End of life, Advanced Illness, Complex Health, and Social Care Research Hub (REACH) and an experience educator across both undergraduate and post graduate curricular. Her clinical background is as a registered Adult Nurse, and she has worked extensively as a Clinical Nurse Specialist in end-of-life care across both acute and community settings. Annie’s research interests currently lie in the support of family members of dying people.

Dr Cherith Semple, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
Prof. Cherith Semple, has over twenty years of clinical practice, education and research experience in oncology nursing. She is a Professor in Clinical Cancer Nursing, which is a joint clinical academic appointment between Ulster University and South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. Cherith currently has a clinical caseload providing care to patients and their families newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer, and leads on two research programmes of work, namely, “Promoting positive coping when a parent of dependent children has cancer” and “Addressing QOL issues for patients with head and neck cancer”. She also supervises PhD and MSc students and impacts teaching programmes for nurses. Some key achievements include RCN Northern Ireland Nurse of the Year in 2015, awarded a MBE in the Queen’s Honour List in 2017 and British Association of Head and Neck Oncologist Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023.

Dr Nick Thompson - Consultant Gastroenterologist with a special interest in clinical nutrition and inflammatory bowel disease
Dr Thompson came to the north-east as a senior registrar and was appointed as a Consultant in Newcastle in 1998. He helped develop the Freeman Hospital as a Specialist Centre for intestinal failure over the past 15 years, with one of the largest patient groups in the UK on Home Parenteral Nutrition.
Dr Thompson also helped develop the Northern Nutrition Network which was awarded the joint Shire/British Society of Gastroenterology prize for Excellence in 2012.
He has multiple publications in clinical nutrition and IBD and during 2017-19 Nick held the role of Senior Secretary of the British Society of Gastroenterology. Within the Trust Nick has been Clinical Director for Medicine and one of the Associated Medical Directors.

Dr Helen Willicombe – Speciality Doctor, Palliative Medicine
Dr Helen Willicombe is a specialty doctor in palliative medicine based within the team at Oxford University Hospitals. She qualified from Newcastle University in 2015 before undertaking GP training in Surrey.
Inspired by a placement she undertook during this time, Helen left general practice and has been working in palliative medicine since 2021.

2024 Programme

Day 1

08:15 Registration (coffee/tea)
08:45 Welcome and introduction
09:00 Benzodiazepines and the Z drugs - Dr Paul Howard
10:00 Parkinson's disease and care at the end of life - Jonathan Hindmarsh
11:00 Coffee/tea
11:30 End of Life Care in Hospitals : Quality Improvement - Dr Ollie Minton
12.30 Lunch - St Anne’s College
13:45 Nutrition - Dr Nicholas Thompson
14:45 Early Satiety - Dr Aidan O’Donoghue
15:45 Coffee/tea
16:15 Considering children when their important adult is dying - Dr Jeff Hanna & Professor Cherith Semple
17:45 Closing Remarks
17:55 End of day 1

Day 2

08:30 Registration (coffee/tea)
09:00 Opening remarks
09:10 Opioids for breathlessness: the state of the evidence - Professor Miriam Johnson
10:10 Fluids at the end of life – current evidence - Dr Helen Willicombe
11:10 Coffee/tea
11:40 Family members witnessing diminishing drinking of relatives dying in hospital - Dr Annie Pettifer
12.40 Lunch – St Anne’s College
14.00 “Physicians’ attitudes and experiences of managing breathlessness in palliative, respiratory and end of life care” - Dr Adejoke Oluyase
15:00 Update from the journals - Dr Mary Miller
15:45 Learning from the Course - Dr Mary Miller
16:00 End of Course

The course aims to provide participants with:
- Knowledge to inform and update your practice
- Knowledge that is delivered by expert speakers
- Knowledge that develops between the speakers and the audience during questions and discussions
- Resources that can be used over the following 12 months to develop and extend your learning
- Resources that will support you to bring learning back to your workplace
- Resources that will help you develop your portfolio of evidence for appraisal and revalidation
- A means of ensuring your practice is at the cutting edge
- Time for thinking, questions and reflection