Surgical palliative care: A 5-hour resident curriculum to improve attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors

Palliative care skills are essential in surgical practice, but time constraints and lack of faculty expertise are barriers to implementing palliative care education in surgical training. This study describes and assesses a 5-hour palliative care curriculum designed to fit within demanding residency programs.

The palliative care curriculum was delivered to general surgery residents at a single institution by faculty surgeons over the course of five 1-hour sessions. Palliative care competence was assessed by a palliative care competence survey completed by residents at baseline and after completion of the palliative care curriculum. The palliative care curriculum survey assessed 3 domains (attitudes, knowledge, and behavior) on a 5-point Likert scale to create a composite score and domain subscores reported as mean (standard deviation).

The study included 62 survey respondents, most of whom were in their first year of training (n = 32, 59.7%). Overall survey scores were significantly higher after palliative care curriculum participation (3.92 [0.43]) when compared with baseline (3.56 [0.61]), P = .008; this was also demonstrated in the knowledge domain (3.73 [0.55] vs 3.32 [0.69], P = .011) and the behavior domain (3.44 [0.7] vs 3.28 [0.78], P = .023). The improvement in scores was demonstrated in both univariate and multivariate analyses (P < .05).

Participation in this 5-hour palliative care curriculum for surgical residents is associated with improved attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors in palliative care. This palliative care curriculum provides a framework for palliative care education across a variety of residency programs based on available time and faculty resources.