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

Palliative care (PC) communication skills are essential to patient care, yet many pediatric fellows do not receive formal PC education. Where it exists, current training often relies on lecture and observation. Simulation-based training is an effective, experiential education tool that allows pediatric fellows to safely practice and debrief difficult conversations to improve their PC communication skills.

Pediatric fellows in hematology/oncology, critical care medicine, and neonatology completed annual or biannual half-day simulation sessions practicing PC communication skills throughout their 3-year fellowship. Each session included 3 scenes with standardized patients (SPs) followed by debriefing with PC faculty, discipline-specific physicians, and the SP. Fellows completed validated surveys evaluating their own "Self-Efficacy" and "Adequacy of their Medical Education" at the following 4 time points: baseline and the end of each fellowship year. Faculty evaluators rated each participant in 9 communication domains.

Participants reported self-perceived improvements in their Self-Efficacy with PC communication (P<.001) and in the Adequacy of their PC Medical Education (P<.001) throughout the 3-year intervention. As rated by external evaluators, communication scores in all 9 domains improved throughout the intervention (P<.001). Participants found the simulation-based trainings highly realistic (95%), useful (97%), and preferable to lecture-based education (87%).

Simulation-based PC communication training is an effective strategy to bolster self-efficacy and skills in pediatric fellows. This method enables fellows to safely practice navigating complex clinical situations as they prepare to become attending physicians. Expanding simulation to other disciplines and pediatric training programs can enhance PC education opportunities and improve patient care.