Palliative Care Communication Training in Pediatric Fellows: A Three-Year Simulation Education Intervention

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Palliative Care
• Simulation-Based Learning

Background:

• Palliative care (PC) communication is crucial in patient care.
• Formal PC communication education is lacking for many pediatric fellows.
• Current training methods often rely on passive learning like lectures and observation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of simulation-based training for pediatric fellows' PC communication skills.
• To assess improvements in fellows' self-efficacy and perceived adequacy of medical education in PC.
• To compare simulation-based training with traditional lecture-based methods.

Main Methods:

• Pediatric fellows in hematology/oncology, critical care, and neonatology participated in simulation sessions over three years.
• Sessions involved standardized patients and debriefing with faculty and physicians.
• Validated surveys assessed self-efficacy and medical education adequacy; faculty rated communication skills.

Main Results:

• Significant improvements were reported in self-efficacy (p<0.001) and adequacy of PC medical education (p<0.001).
• External evaluators noted improvements in all nine communication domains (p<0.001).
• Participants found simulation realistic (95%), useful (97%), and preferred it over lectures (87%).

Conclusions:

• Simulation-based PC communication training effectively enhances pediatric fellows' self-efficacy and skills.
• This experiential approach provides a safe environment for practicing complex communication scenarios.
• Expanding simulation training can improve PC education and patient care across pediatric disciplines.