Designing and Developing Interprofessional Learning Experiences in Palliative Care: A Collaborative Workshop Approach

Team-based care is vital in palliative care, but there is limited interprofessional education (IPE) among health care providers, leading to siloed learning. This project addresses this gap by developing a workshop focused on the active dying process, promoting shared competencies among palliative medicine, geriatrics, nursing, and psychology subspecialty learners.

We aimed to design, implement, and evaluate an Interprofessional Education Exchange (IPEX) Death and Dying workshop to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and improve participants' comfort with palliative care competencies.

A full-day, case-based workshop was developed using the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation model, emphasizing experiential and collaborative learning.

Two workshops were held at a tertiary southeastern academic university in the United States (US) in 2022 (cohort 1) and 2023 (cohort 2). A total of 25 participants, including palliative medicine fellows, geriatric medicine fellows, advanced nurse practitioner students, and psychology residents, completed the workshops.

Participants' comfort with palliative care competencies, perceptions of interprofessional collaboration, and qualitative feedback were assessed using post-workshop surveys.

Participants' comfort in providing anticipatory guidance, addressing spiritual distress, and supporting grief and bereavement improved. Interprofessional collaboration and professional growth, particularly in communication and understanding each other's roles and responsibilities in caring for the actively dying, also increased.

The collaborative IPEX Death and Dying workshop has been shown to enhance competencies and foster interprofessional collaboration among palliative care subspecialty learners across four disciplines. This model holds potential for broader implementation across health care settings to improve care for the seriously ill patients.