The state of undergraduate palliative care education at Austrian medical schools – a mixed methods study

BMC Palliative Care

Research

Véronique Toussaint¹  Frank Elsner¹  Rainer Simader²  Piret Paal³ 

[1] Department of Palliative Medicine, Medical Faculty RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany;Hospiz Österreich / Österreichische Palliativgesellschaft, Vienna, Österreich;Institute of Palliative Care, Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg, Austria;

关键词: Palliative care;    Palliative medicine;    Undergraduate education;    Teaching;    University;    Medical school;    Austria;    Europe;    European Region;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12904-023-01255-9

 received in 2023-04-17, accepted in 2023-09-01,  发布年份 2023

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThere is an increasing demand for universal, high-quality access to palliative care in Austria. To ensure this, the implementation of palliative care in the medical studies curriculum is essential. This is the first study to investigate the state of undergraduate palliative care education at Austrian medical schools.MethodsFor this mixed-methods study with concurrent embedded design, expert interviews and online surveys were conducted between March and August 2022. The interviews were subjected to a thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke, while the questionnaires were analysed descriptively-statistically. For the final integration, the results of both methods for each topic are presented and discussed complementarily. Both the primary qualitative and supportive quantitative data were collected to combine the advantages of the in-depth nature of the qualitative data and the consistent structure of the quantitative data to provide a more precise representation of the state of teaching.ResultsTwenty-two persons participated in the study, of whom twenty-one participated in the interview and eight in the questionnaire. The participants were experts in palliative care teaching at Austrian medical schools. Currently, palliative care is taught at seven out of the eight universities. Large differences were found in the number of hours, organisation, teaching formats, and interprofessional education. At present, three universities have a chair for palliative care and at least five universities have access to a palliative care unit.ConclusionUndergraduate palliative care education in Austria is very heterogeneous and does not meet the minimum standards suggested by the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) curriculum recommendations. However, several universities are planning measures to expand palliative care teaching, such as the introduction of mandatory teaching or the establishment of new teaching formats. Better coordination and networking within and between universities would be beneficial for the expansion and quality of teaching.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2023

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