How effective is undergraduate palliative care teaching for medical students? A systematic literature review

Abstract

Palliative care is central to the role of all clinical doctors. There is variability in the amount and type of teaching about palliative care at undergraduate level. Time allocated for such teaching within the undergraduate medical curricula remains scarce. Given this, the effectiveness of palliative care teaching needs to be known.ObjectivesTo evaluate the effectiveness of palliative care teaching for undergraduate medical students.DesignA systematic review was prepared according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidance. Screening, data extraction and quality assessment (mixed methods and Cochrane risk of bias tool) were performed in duplicate.Data sourcesEmbase, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, ClinicalTrials.gov, Cochrane and grey literature in August 2019. Studies evaluating palliative care teaching interventions with medical students were included.Results1446 titles/abstracts and 122 full-text articles were screened. 19 studies were included with 3253 participants. 17 of the varied methods palliative care teaching interventions improved knowledge outcomes. The effect of teaching on clinical practice and patient outcomes was not evaluated in any study.ConclusionsThe majority of palliative care teaching interventions reviewed improved knowledge of medical students. The studies did not show one type of teaching method to be better than others, and thus no ‘best way’ to provide teaching about palliative care was identified. High quality, comparative research is needed to further understand effectiveness of palliative care teaching on patient care/clinical practice/outcomes in the short-term and longer-term.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42018115257.

Palliative care education and its effectiveness: a systematic review

“…The analysis of the PCE programs shows that the majority audience were healthcare professionals, followed by family caregivers and a small number of indigenous community carers, patients and volunteers. This finding is consistent with the newly published systematic reviews on the effectiveness of educational interventions on palliative care, which indicate that most educational programs on palliative care target healthcare workers [64,65,66,67]. The current study reveals that the public and policymakers were not included as an audience in the included studies.…”

Assessing Medical Students’ Confidence towards Provision of Palliative Care: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…In the study, knowledge is significantly positively associated to the confidence of students in providing palliative care. Such results are also consistent with abroad studies, where places like the Netherlands [27], Germany [30], the United Kingdom [44] and South Korea [45] have conducted research proving a significant association between knowledge and confidence. When students obtain more comprehensive knowledge and a better understanding of different aspects of palliative care (e.g., philosophy), it allows them to have a higher preparedness and hence, confidence, to begin their clinical work in the future [3,12].…”

Teaching Evaluation Algorithm Based on Grey Relational Analysis

“…For example, the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Control has arranged sessions on grey systems for five consecutive years since 2004 in the Hague, Netherlands; Arizona, USA; Mariupol, Slovenia; Hawaii, USA; Taiwan, China; Montreal, Canada; Wroclaw, Poland; and Singapore [13]. In 2003, the 32nd International Conference on Computer and Industrial Engineering in Ireland arranged four sessions on grey system theory [14,15]; in addition, the International Conference on System Predictive Control and the International Conference on Modeling of Uncertainty Systems have made grey system theory a hot topic of their attention and discussion [16][17][18].…”