Do Doctors Gain More Confidence from a Longer Palliative Medicine Posting?

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Palliative Care Research
• Physician Training

Background:

• Doctors often report insufficient training and confidence in delivering palliative care.
• Palliative care training enhances self-assessed competence, but the impact of posting duration is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if the length of a palliative medicine (PM) posting influences the degree of improvement in doctors' confidence.
• To assess confidence changes across various palliative care domains based on posting duration.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of doctors' self-rated palliative care competence before and after PM postings.
• Analysis of score changes to correlate improvement with posting duration.
• Study involved 71 residents and medical officers in a hospital-based palliative care service.

Main Results:

• Participants initially reported low self-rated competence in palliative care.
• Longer PM posting durations led to greater improvements in doctors' confidence across palliative care domains.
• Significant gains in confidence were observed in end-of-life communication skills.

Conclusions:

• While a one-month posting may cover basic end-of-life issues, longer durations yield more substantial confidence improvements.
• Doctors in specialties frequently encountering terminally ill patients benefit from extended PM postings.
• Increased confidence from longer PM training better prepares physicians to care for terminally ill patients.