Excellence in Postlicensure Interprofessional Palliative Care Education

Abstract

An increasing number of palliative care educational programs strive to meet the workforce need for palliative care clinicians. This growth necessitates development of robust quality standards. The purpose of this Delphi consensus process was to describe high-quality postlicensure interprofessional palliative care education programs. The steering committee, composed of 6 faculty with experience implementing interprofessional palliative care educational programs, developed initial characteristics, definitions, and subcategories, which were refined through a series of 3 iterative Delphi surveys and a public presentation at a national palliative care meeting. More than 50 palliative care clinicians and educators representing multiple professions were invited to participate in the Delphi surveys; 20 completed round 1, 23 completed round 2, and 15 participants completed round 3. The final consensus included 6 characteristics with definitions, and both required and recommended subcategories for each characteristic. Identified characteristics include competencies, content, educational strategies, interprofessional focus, evaluation, and systems integration. This initial description of quality for postlicensure interprofessional palliative care education programs may be used by learners to guide program selection, new or existing program faculty for course development or quality improvement, or professional organizations to evaluate program quality in a program certification or quality award initiative.

Expanding the Interdisciplinary Palliative Medicine Workforce: A Longitudinal Education and Mentoring Program for Practicing Clinicians

“…In fact, evaluation methods for interdisciplinary skills are currently lacking in published literature 29 . The CPMTP-2 is a model that attempts to integrate the 6 key characteristics of interprofessional PC education as outlined from a recent consensus Delphi survey, including competencies, content, educational strategies, interprofessional focus, evaluation, and systems integration 30 . Given the emphasis on team-based care, future work should be conducted to develop assessment tools that meet the needs of interdisciplinary learning.…”

An Interprofessional Primary Palliative Care Curriculum for Health Care Trainees and Practicing Clinicians

“…Through the collective expertise of the curriculum development team and review of the NCP guidelines, 15 we identified eight curriculum modules. Ultimately, we created a ninth module, separating Psycho-social care and Spiritual and Cultural Care into distinct modules based on learner feedback.…”

“… 2 Based on our environmental scan, most primary palliative care offerings currently available are brief, 9 , 10 asynchronous, 9–14 fee-based, 12 , 13 and/or are designed by and for a single profession. 14 , 15 Longitudinal, interactive, and comprehensive curricula designed by a team of interprofessional clinicians for interprofessional clinicians remain relatively uncommon. 15 While some high-quality, interactive, and interprofessional curricula including a continuing medical education course “Practice-PC” offered through the University of California, San Francisco 16 and palliative care certificate programs through the University of Washington and Colorado University exist, 17 , 18 these require significant time (i.e., year-long) and financial commitments (ranging between $5,500 and $26,100).…”