Palliative Care for the Medically Complex Child

Authors

Melanie Anspacher, George Washington University
Neha H. Shah, George Washington UniversityFollow

Document Type

Instructional Material

Publication Date

9-13-2013

Description

**From the AAMC website: Contains time-sensitive information that will likely be inaccurate, obsolete, or irrelevant by August 12, 2016**

Children with special health care needs are increasingly prevalent in US hospitals. The pediatric hospitalist is often the primary provider of inpatient care for these patients. The Complex Care Curriculum was developed to provide a multi-modal educational curriculum for providers with the overall goal of improving inpatient care for this population. The curriculum is composed primarily of a series of topic-specific learning modules. This particular resource was created to provide pediatricians with educational materials related to palliative care for the medically complex child.

This resource includes a multimedia, narrated PowerPoint show for asynchronous learning, a PowerPoint presentation adapted for didactic teaching, as well as accompanying facilitator guides, suggested multiple choice questions with answer key, an evaluation tool, and a complete list of references and resources. The target audience is pediatric hospitalists and other general pediatric providers or trainees who care for medically complex children in an inpatient setting, although it may also be applicable to health care providers in outpatient settings. This resource can be used to study independently or to teach to other learners in small group settings.

This module was created as part of a larger Complex Care Curriculum by authors in the Pediatric Hospitalist Division at Children's National Medical Center in Washington, DC. This curriculum was developed for providers who care for medically complex patients in a busy inpatient setting to have an opportunity to increase knowledge, skills and awareness through asynchronous learning modules. Implementation of this curriculum was based on a previously completed needs assessment that identified preferred modalities of learning, as well as topics of greatest need, which included palliative care for the medically complex child.

The curriculum was implemented in 2012 and a pilot study of participants was conducted. Impact on knowledge, skills and attitudes was assessed. Fifteen study participants completed the palliative care module. Of these participants, 93% either agreed or strongly agreed that the module increased their comfort with the topic and that it would change their clinical practice. All agreed that the learning format was appropriate to their learning needs.

Results of the pilot study showed a statistically significant increase in test scores on the palliative care questions specifically.

Comments from participants on this learning module included: "Material was well organized"; "The case really centered the topic"; "Excellent overview and enjoyed specific case references"; "Academic references were appreciated"; "Covered highlights of what should be known by the general hospital pediatrician". Many participants highlighted the graphics as what they liked best about the presentation.

Based on this study, this module along with others in the curriculum continues to be offered to trainees and new faculty to augment their knowledge and skills in this area.

MedEdPORTAL publication ID 9538. Link to original.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Anspacher M, Shah N. Palliative care for the medically complex child. MedEdPORTAL Publications. 2013;9:9538. http://doi.org/10.15766/mep_2374-8265.9538