Mandatory Palliative Care Education for Surgical Residents: Initial Focus on Teaching Pain Management

Abstract

BackgroundKnowledge concerning palliative care and the associated skills, including effective pain control, is essential for surgeons who treat cancer patients in daily practice. This study focuses on a palliative care training course that has been mandatorily conducted for all surgical residents of our hospital since 2009.MethodsWe evaluated the effectiveness of our mandatory palliative care training course by conducting a retrospective study of the patients' medical records and participants' questionnaire results and discussed the importance of palliative care education for surgical residents.ResultsAll 12 surgical residents who participated in the course in 2009 had graduated 4–9 years back. They were assigned to look after a total of 92 cases (average, 7.66 cases per resident) during the course. The purpose of care in most cases (92.3%) was to mitigate pain. Introducing analgesic adjuvants such as gabapentin or amitriptyline accounted for the largest part of initial interventions (23.9%) aimed at controlling cancer pain, followed by changes in route of administration or doses of prior opioid analgesics (21.7%). Interventions with opioid analgesics were conducted most frequently (47.7%). The overall pain improvement rate was 89.1%. We used a questionnaire after the course to evaluate its effectiveness.ConclusionsThe surgical residents stated that it was a meaningful course through which they gained practical knowledge on palliative care and that the experience would change their approach to home care.

Implementation of a Competency-Based, Interdisciplinary Pediatric Palliative Care Curriculum Using Content and Format Preferred by Pediatric Residents

“…A competency-based palliative care education emphasizes not only a knowledge base, but an actual behavior and a perception of feasibility within the care setting environment so that knowledge becomes an action [5]. Competency-based curricula ideally reach bedside impact, as a mandatory core pain management palliative care curriculum for surgical residents was found to improve patient perception of pain control [6].…”

Awareness and implementation of recommendations made by the Strategic Planning Summit for Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacy in PGY1 pharmacy residency programs

“…[40][41][42][43] Internal Medicine and Family Medicine Physician Residency training program practices are of greatest interest to these authors given the relative similarities, especially during the intern year, to that of a PGY1 pharmacy resident. Like pharmacy residencies, these programs report difficulty incorporating PPC training for their medical residents given the breadth of necessary knowledge and skills required.…”

Avaliação do Conhecimento em Cuidados Paliativos em Estudantes durante o Curso de Medicina

“…De forma geral, há um importante déficit de ensino em cuidados paliativos (CP) e, consequentemente, de conhecimento em CP (CCP) entre estudantes de Medicina e médicos [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] . Por outro lado, o número de pacientes que necessitam de CP cresce significativamente por causa do envelhecimento da população e do aumento das doenças crônicas em estágios avançados (como câncer metastático, demência avançada, doença pulmonar obstrutiva crônica em uso de oxigênio, insuficiência cardíaca classe funcional IV, idoso com fragilidade e múltiplas comorbidades) 9,10 .…”