Abstract
Objectives: Palliative care is an important component of critical care medicine. Few fellowship programs have developed a curriculum designed to teach palliative care precepts to trainees. We describe our 2-yr experience in teaching palliative care to multidisciplinary critical care medicine fellows. Design: Two-consecutive-year palliative care training for unselected critical care medicine fellows at a large, urban, university, tertiary care medical center. Interventions: We 1) identified palliative care skills and knowledge that first-year critical care fellows should acquire; 2) developed a curriculum to teach those skills and knowledge, including required readings, small group lectures and skills sessions that included role-playing to modify skills and attitudes, and (in year 2) experiential learning on a hospital-based palliative care rotation; and 3) attempted to evaluate the curriculum with attitude and knowledge assessments. Results: A total of 35 fellows participated in the palliative care training during the 2 yrs reported. Seven fellows participated in a clinical rotation in palliative care. Fellows evaluated usefulness of the small group sessions between 4.4 and 4.9 on a 5-point Likert scale. Four of seven fellows rated the clinical rotation quality at 3/5. Pretest and posttest knowledge mean scores were 58% and 69%, respectively. Problems included providing time for fellows to participate in the clinical rotation and negative attitudes regarding the relevance of palliative care to their future in critical care. Conclusions: Palliative care training for critical care fellows is feasible. Fellows value skills training more than a clinical rotation in palliative care. Baseline knowledge of palliative care is low.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1257-1262 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Critical care medicine |
Volume | 31 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 1 2003 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Critical care
- Curriculum
- End-of-life care
- Interdisciplinary care
- Palliative care
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Critical Care and Intensive Care Medicine