Project ECHO in Hospice and Palliative Care: Interdisciplinary Virtual Meeting to Address Needs and Critical Gaps in Our Field (FR218)

Abstract

Outcomes 1. Compare and contrast the Project ECHO model with other forms of education, mentoring, and support for practitioners in our field 2. Assess practice needs and gaps in your organization or in our field and develop interdisciplinary techniques and curricula to address those concernsAs a response to the COVID-19 pandemic we created and executed an 18-month nationwide, interdisciplinary, virtual meeting project for hospice and palliative medicine team members. Through team expertise and collaboration, experience with the use of Project ECHO, and close monitoring of the impact the pandemic was disproportionately having on underserved communities and communities of color, we decided upon our focus areas for the project. We chose areas we thought were critical to the overall support of providers, patients, and our larger hospice and palliative medicine community. Areas to be addressed included knowledge gaps in treating people with COVID-19; advanced communication skillset needs with the rapid pivot to telehealth; and equity, diversity, inclusion, and racism in our field. Additionally, we wanted to build in techniques and methods we could use to foster strong interdisciplinary interactions toward building resilience and community in the face of the many unknowns of treating patients and caring for ourselves through the pandemic. We chose the model offered by Project ECHO, at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, as the structure upon which we would build our project and to meet our objectives. The ECHO model uses virtual gathering to support mentorship, welcomes all levels of training with an “all teach, all learn” focus, and offers patient case–based learning in a way so as to democratize specialty knowledge. The virtual setting allows for participation regardless of location. We have gathered post-session survey data, participant data on moral distress, and data on provider views of their ability to affect equity, diversity, inclusion, and racism in our field. Our project is ongoing.Presenters are members of our project's interdisciplinary expert team, including MDs, an MSW/LCSW, a PharmD, and a PhD palliative care researcher. We will present data gathered thus far and will use interactive methods to teach and to elicit audience participation.