How do palliative care rotations impact junior doctors?

There is a current inequitable distribution of palliative care services and an increasing need for specialist and generalist palliative care workforce globally. Despite this, there are difficulties in retaining and recruiting palliative care specialists and in developing generalist palliative care skills for all clinicians. This study aims to investigate how palliative care rotations influence junior doctors in their career choices regarding palliative medicine, to explore how junior doctors develop generalist palliative care skills, and to explore possible barriers to providing accessible palliative care.

This qualitative study utilizes semi-structured interviews to explore the views of sixteen doctors from various regions of Aotearoa New Zealand on how their palliative care rotations impacted their vocational choices and clinical practice. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis.

Four themes were identified from the research data, namely 'Recognized the Importance of Palliative Care', 'Pursue Career in Palliative Care', 'Choice of Alternative Vocation', and 'Improve and Promote Palliative Care'.

To meet the growing demands of accessible and equitable palliative care needs, there needs to be greater recruitment and retention of palliative care providers, and all doctors should develop generalist palliative care skills. This study provides doctors' insights into the crucial impacts that palliative care rotations have for junior doctors and how it impacts career choices around palliative medicine.