Development of an Interprofessional Clinician Training in Pediatric Serious Illness Communication

Development of an Interprofessional Clinician Training in Pediatric Serious Illness Communication

DeCourcey DD; Bernacki R; Carozza J; Lach S; Schwartz AW

Journal of Palliative Medicine

2025

Background: Early advance care planning (ACP) is associated with improved outcomes in pediatrics, yet few rigorously developed curricula exist to train interprofessional clinicians in ACP communication. Objectives: To develop, pilot and evaluate an evidence-based virtual clinician training in a pediatric serious illness communication program (PediSICP) to facilitate ACP. Primary outcomes were learner self-assessment of skills attainment and training program satisfaction. Methods: We developed an interactive, skills-based three-hour synchronous online clinician training program using Kern's Six-Step Curriculum Design, incorporating didactic and simulated patient encounters with a trained actor. Specific, measurable cognitive and behavioral learning objectives were to improve knowledge of the evidence-based benefits of ACP, to describe the PediSICP framework, and to improve practice by demonstrating a simulated ACP conversation using a goals and values approach. Sub-objectives include responding to emotion and sharing prognosis using "wish/worry" statements. Results: We conducted 10 virtual trainings from April to December 2021, each with 2-8 participants (n = 40), including 27 physicians, 7 nurse practitioners, 5 nurses, and 1 respiratory therapist from critical care, cardiology, pulmonary, and complex care; 62.5% reported no prior formal ACP communication training. Following training, 97% of participants were highly satisfied with training quality, and 100% endorsed that they would recommend it to colleagues. Additionally, clinician self-reported comfort discussing fundamental elements of ACP significantly increased following the training. Conclusion: Teaching ACP communication virtually to pediatric interprofessional clinicians is both feasible and acceptable, with improvements described in self-reported knowledge and comfort discussing elements of ACP. Future research will test the efficacy of PediSICP to facilitate longitudinal ACP.

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

April List 2025