A faculty development course for end-of-life care

A faculty development course was offered at the Medical College of Wisconsin to bolster existing medical student and housestaff training opportunities in palliative medicine. An 8- week, 12 contact-hour course was designed to provide up to 15 faculty members training in the practice and teaching of end-of-life care. Fifteen faculty registered, but only 10 attended at least three of eight educational sessions. Educational formats included didactic presentations, case studies, study guides and completion of action plans-explicit plans for utilization of newly learned material in clinical and educational practice. In a retrospective, pre/post self-evaluation, participants indicated poor or fair precourse knowledge and self-confidence in most areas of end-of-life care. Significant improvement in end-of-life knowledge and selfconfidence was noted for eight of 11 content areas and in self-assessed education skills in six of seven content areas. Although attendance was disappointing, the course was strongly endorsed by participating faculty. Faculty who attended at least three sessions reported significant improvement in many aspects of end-of-life clinical care, as well as in self-confidence and education skills, and were able to use the educational material to train a range of learners. Sample educational material is included with this report.