Introduction: Objective standardized teaching exercises (OSTEs) are widely used to develop professional competencies, especially in the health care professions. An OSTE involves exposing different providers to the same, time-limited scenario that is concurrently observed and/or recorded for either formative or summative evaluation. As there are limited resources available for creating a resident-specific OSTE, especially those applicable to family and community medicine residents, we created and evaluated a resident OSTE (R-OSTE) for second-and third-year family and community medicine residents. Methods: This R-OSTE involved two cases. The first featured Taylor, a third-year medical student resistant to feedback. The second featured Kris, a first-year resident nervous about approaching the attending on duty. Our R-OSTE had residents teaching interpersonal skills to trained actors in a standardized learner role. Results: Residents in the teaching role were formatively evaluated by peer observers (fellow residents) and standardized learners on interpersonal domains such as communication and professionalism. Learners gave residents an average performance rating of 4.9 on a 1 to 6 scale with 1 = Very Poor and 6 = Excellent. Residents also evaluated the OSTE itself, rating their experience on multiple teaching-related statements. Eighty-six percent of residents agreed this exercise was an appropriate development activity for family medicine residents. Overall, our R-OSTE was rated highly for relevance to teaching by the residents. Discussion: The residents were rated highly by both peer observers and standardized learners. However, there was little variability in peer observer scores, indicating the need for an alternative method of measurement.
Registered nurses play a critical role in delivering effective palliative and end-of-life patient care. Previous literature has cited that registered nurses report a lack of adequate palliative care training in academic and continuing education programs. Providing care to patients at the end of life requires knowledge in a variety of areas such as nonpharmacologic symptom management, cultural considerations, and pain management. This study aimed to investigate the impact of a professional development intervention among registered nurses on their educational needs in providing palliative care. Using a 1-group pretest-posttest design, a convenience sample of registered nurses completed an electronic survey containing demographic questions and the End-of-Life Professional Caregiver Survey. The professional development intervention consisted of an 8-hour training conducted by a content expert on palliative patient care addressing the competencies developed by the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium. The results revealed a significant increase in participant knowledge in providing quality palliative care to patients (P < .001). Education programs on quality palliative and end-of-life patient care can effectively improve the care delivered to this patient population.
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