Advance Care Planning Education for Psychiatrists: A Novel Training Workshop (S805)

Abstract

1.Identify medical and psychosocial factors that support a greater need for advance care planning among psychiatric patients.2.Argue for the need for psychiatrists to receive training in advance care planning.3.Evaluate the potential of a one-time, skills-based training workshop to impact attitudes, comfort, skills, and knowledge of psychiatry residents in advance care planning. Despite a perceived need, rates of advance directive completion among psychiatric patients are low, and psychiatrists receive little to no training in advance care planning. We identified advance care planning as an unmet educational need in psychiatry and developed a skills-based training workshop for psychiatry residents. •Identify areas of need for advance care planning (ACP) training for psychiatry residents at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.•Develop and implement a residency-wide educational workshop to train psychiatry residents in medical and mental health ACP.•Assess residents’ attitudes, comfort, knowledge, and skills in engaging in medical and mental health advance care planning before and after the workshop. Based on results of a needs assessment, we developed a three-hour ACP educational workshop for psychiatry residents, including drill-based guided practice in ACP communication skills and a case-based roleplay exercise to complete mental health advance directives. Psychiatry residents participating in this training completed pre- and post-workshop surveys assessing their attitudes, comfort, knowledge, and skills in ACP domains Psychiatry residents completed this training and the pre-workshop (n = 42) and post-workshop surveys (n = 41). After the training, residents reported a greater responsibility to facilitate psychiatric ACP (p = 0.03). They cited greater comfort in discussing end-of-life care (p = 0.04), facilitating medical ACP (p = 0.002), and facilitating psychiatric ACP (p <0.001). They reported being more able to address key elements of ACP with patients (p <0.001). They also demonstrated statistically significant score increases on objective measures of ACP knowledge. Finally, residents reported high satisfaction with this training. A one-time educational workshop targeting produced improvements in psychiatry residents’ attitudes, comfort, skills, and knowledge in ACP.