A college and a care service provider came together to offer hands-on experience for its employees.

The College of West Anglia’s School of Nursing Studies has strengthened its community partnership with Hillington-based Norfolk Tapping House by hosting a ‘palliative care emergencies and verification of expected death simulation’ training session.

The session took place using the school’s clinical facilities and equipment, including a ‘trauma man’ and patient simulation system.

The collaboration enabled Tapping House employees to gain hands-on experience in a realistic and supportive learning environment.

Using the patient simulation system and clinical bays, employees were able to develop confidence in areas such as patient communication, end-of-life care awareness, and responding to changing patient needs.

This marks an important step in developing stronger ties between healthcare education and community-based care providers, ensuring that both students and visitors benefit from shared resources and shared learning.

It also supports the ongoing mission of the School of Nursing Studies to expand high quality training opportunities across the region.

Alice Dean, clinical educator at Tapping House, said: “It has been such a wonderful opportunity for us to be able to use these outstanding facilities.

“This is our fourth time teaching our palliative emergencies and verification of expected death training session here at the college.

“Staff report that using the ‘trauma man’ and patient simulation system provides much more realistic and immersive training by using hands-on role play.

“Our nursing staff have fed back how much more embedded the learning has been with the use of the facilities and this all supports us to keep up to date with our clinical skills in order to continue to provide quality end-of-life care for our patients at Tapping House”.

Adrian Debney, head of School of Nursing Studies, said: “We are fully committed to ensuring that our facilities benefit not just our students, but the wider health and care community in West Norfolk.

“Opportunities like this allow us to share knowledge, strengthen professional confidence, and ultimately improve the standard of care delivered across our region. We are proud to support Norfolk Tapping House and look forward to continuing this partnership.”

The School of Nursing Studies and Tapping House plan to continue building on this partnership through future training opportunities, shared workshops, and community engagement initiatives.