Primary Palliative Care Education Research Articles

A Local Needs Assessment for Palliative Care Education (S743)

•List the three palliative care content domains in which non-palliative care physicians were most interested in improving their skills/knowledge.•Describe two reasons why it is important to tailor primary palliative care education to physician preferences. Access to high quality palliative care is critical for those with serious illness, but palliative care specialists cannot see all such patients. Mastery of primary palliative care skills by all physicians is one method to begin addressing this challenge. To measure interest in primary palliative care education among physicians in the Rochester, NY area. A survey was developed to assess interest in: 1) primary palliative care educational offerings and, 2) settings in which such education could be offered. Subjects were palliative care specialists (PCSs) and non-palliative care physicians (NPCPs), including residents and physicians practicing primary care, hospital medicine, and neurology. NPCPs were asked to rate their own interest in improving their skill/knowledge in 13 domains and the settings they preferred. PCSs were asked to assess referring physicians’ level of palliative care skill/knowledge and the effectiveness of each educational setting. NPCPs expressed the most interest in addressing requests to hasten death, managing psychological symptoms, and the responsibilities of a hospice attending (60-67%), which was similar to PCSs’ opinions. In contrast, opinions about desired/effective educational settings differed significantly, with NPCPs rating hour-long workshops or lectures most positively, and PCSs assessing these as least effective. Educational content preferences also varied among NPCP specialties in 4 of 13 items. This survey revealed overlapping areas of interest, as well as some disagreement, with respect to topics important to primary palliative care education between NPCPs and PCSs. There was significant disagreement regarding educational settings, with NPCPs indicating a preference for brief educational formats and PCSs rating longer formats as more effective. Additionally, heterogeneity of responses among NPCP groups suggests a need to tailor educational efforts by specialty.

Primary Palliative Care Education: A Case Study in Needs Assessment and Curricular Development (FR450)

Primary Palliative Care Education: A Case Study in Needs Assessment and Curricular Development (FR450)

Primary Palliative Care Education in Specialty Oncology Training: More Work Is Needed.

Primary Palliative Care Education in Specialty Oncology Training: More Work Is Needed.

The Advanced Practice Registered Nurses Palliative Care Externship: A Model for Primary Palliative Care Education.

Nationally, the contribution of palliative care to high-quality health care continues to be recognized resulting in demand for palliative care services. This has resulted in an expected shortage of clinicians with palliative care knowledge and experience. The education and scope of practice of advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) provides an ideal foundation for further palliative care education and training to fill this gap. The authors sought a method to provide midcareer APRNs with education and training in primary palliative care. The program took place at a well-established palliative care program at an academic medical center. This article describes an Institutional Review Board-approved week-long intensive APRN externship designed to provide education and training in primary palliative care for APRNs across disease populations. To best educate these APRNs, who did not have formal palliative care in their graduate education, the externship includes didactic, experiential, and clinical components to meet the needs of APRNs with minimal palliative care education and/or experiences. Precourse and postcourse data collection was performed. Results demonstrated increased knowledge, skills, and confidence in palliative care. This is a sustainable model for primary palliative care and midcareer APRNs who wish to enter palliative care. It is replicable for other disciplines as well.

Palliating oncologists: A pilot study on primary palliative care development in hematology-oncology trainee outpatient clinics.

21 Background: Primary Palliative Care (PPC) denotes basic PC competencies; whereas secondary PC (SPC) denotes consultant expertise. PPC competency includes basic symptom assessment/management; fundamental communication skills; and identification of patients for SPC. ASCO recommends early concurrent PC in advanced cancer/high symptom burden as it improves quality of life, symptom management, and care satisfaction. Because PC need exceeds availability of SPC providers, PPC proficiency by oncologists is essential. To enhance Hematology-Oncology (HO) fellows’ clinical experience through more effective PC training/utilization, we piloted an integrated fellows’ pre-clinic conference. Methods: HO fellows’ pre-clinic conferences were divided into intervention and control groups. Over 8 weeks, the PC fellow participated in interdisciplinary discussion for 2 weekly 1-hour conferences. The PC fellow provided PPC education via brief formal and informal didactics and identified patients for SPC referral. All HO fellows were surveyed before and after the intervention to assess comfort level with PPC and SPC referral. The survey used Likert-type scales and short-answer questions. Results: All HO fellows (N=10) voluntarily participated: 6 in the intervention group (IG), and 4 in the control group (CG). The IG demonstrated clearly enhanced comfort level with managing symptoms by improving in 100% of PPC categories after the intervention compared to 27% in the CG. Referral to SPC also increased in the IG, while it decreased in the CG. All HO fellows in the IG liked the PC integration, wanted to continue it, and wanted SPC availability in their future practice. Conclusions: This integration not only enhanced HO fellows’ PPC training and increased referral to SPC; it also fostered a partnership between HO and PC providers early in their careers. Such collaborative efforts are likely to improve long-term comprehensive cancer care as well as patient and provider satisfaction. Further study is merited and should include multiple centers and patient evaluations.