Teaching Sensitive Subjects Online: Lessons Learnt From the Pandemic and the Implications for Contemporary Nurse Education

• Sensitive topics abound in nursing curricula providing challenges for teachers. • This paper draws learning from a total on line approach to teaching during a global pandemic giving guidance regarding strategies to help both teachers and students. • Although based on teaching aspects of children's palliative care the findings are transferrable to other sensitive topics being taught within the nursing curricula. Covid 19 and the associated restrictions necessitated for an abrupt change to the way education was provided to nursing students . This study aims to explore the views/opinions of third year children's nursing students and nurse educators of an online learning approach regarding children's palliative care during a global pandemic. Data were collected via an online questionnaire with nursing students and a reflective diary with nurse educators. Covid-19 and the associated restrictions had a significant impact on students and academics learning and teaching experiences. This small scale study gave insights into practices when teaching sensitive subjects to students on line. Whilst more blended teaching is likely to be used in the future, we highlight the range of support that can be offered to students which has implications for contemporary nursing practice. Whilst students and academics prefer face-to-face delivery for sensitive topics such as children's palliative care, achieving a true ‘blend’ through asynchronous and synchronous learning can enable a quality learning experience. Consideration needs to be given to provision of emotional and practical support for students and academics.