Incorporating palliative care into undergraduate curricula: lessons for curriculum development

Abstract

The incorporation of palliative care into the medical undergraduate curriculum involves a complex process of individual, institutional, clinical, patient and curricular factors. These new findings could help medical schools to incorporate or improve such teaching.

“It is not the fading candle that one expects”: general practitioners’ perspectives on life-preserving versus “letting go” decision-making in end-of-life home care

“…The causes of a physician’s life-preserving attitude and therapeutic tenacity are multiple and interdependent, yet sensitizing physicians to the finiteness of life seems acquirable [44]. Although it is internationally well recognized that teaching about terminal decline and death and palliative care should begin at the undergraduate level, its incorporation into teaching programmes in medical schools is still substandard worldwide [43,45]. Acceptance of dying is, however, considered as a precondition for effective palliative practice [33] and acquiring this attitude should not be left to a physician’s own resources.…”

Integrating palliative care content into a new undergraduate nursing curriculum: The University of Notre Dame, Australia – Sydney experience

“…This iterative approach allows the palliative care content to be spiralled across multiple units and provides ample opportunity for UNDA students to consolidate their palliative care learning experiences. The consolidation of experience is considered essential for developing the graduate capabilities required to deliver qualified palliative care in the clinical setting (Gibbins et al, 2009).…”

“…A recent UK study suggests that palliative care content is now generally included in the majority of undergraduate nursing courses, with 45 hours on average devoted to palliative care learning with the majority of students participating in these units (Dickinson, Clark, & Sque, 2008). Despite this positive progress there are a number of notable barriers that can effectively limit the integration of palliative care content into the undergraduate curricula, including an overcrowded curriculum, lack of a local champion, content not being linked to identified need, limited access to specialist palliative care clinical placements, general reluctance to allow students to engage with a frail and vulnerable patient population and limited organisational support (Gibbins et al, 2009;Lloyd-Williams & Field, 2002).…”

“…Nursing graduates need to be prepared with foundation palliative approach knowledge and capabilities as they are the discipline most likely to spend the greatest amount of time with patients and their families at the end-of-life (Gibbins, McCoubrie, Maher, & Forbes, 2009;Wallace et al, 2009). The delivery of a palliative approach requires all nurses to have the capabilities to identify when patients with complex palliative care needs would benefit from specialist input and to be able to provide best evidenced based endof-life care (Australian Department of Health and Ageing and National Health and Medical Research Council, 2006).…”

The Perspectives on Including Palliative Care in the Indian Undergraduate Physiotherapy Curriculum

“…This was one of the recommendations of the WHO too. The importance of palliative care in the undergraduate curriculum of health professions has been well documented in the western literature [26][27][28][29][30] and it is a part of their undergraduate curriculum worldwide. The introduction of palliative care in the undergraduate medical and nursing training in the western countries have paved way to introduce palliative care into the Indian medical and nursing curriculum.…”