Introduction

There are myriad palliative and end-of-life care education and training resources available in Australia. Yet no systematic catalogue of these resources exists to support healthcare organisations to build staff knowledge and skills in palliative and end-of-life care. Our objective was to identify and map such resources to inform development of an evidence-based staff education and training framework for a health network.

Methods

Resources were identified through snowball scanning (October 2022-) of standards, guidelines, policies, curricula, reports, websites, and peer-reviewed literature relevant to staff education/training in palliative and end-of-life care via search engines with pre-determined keywords and references/links of identified resources. Information relevant to components of palliative and end-of-life care and levels [Tier 1 (infrequently relevant to role), 2 (frequently relevant to role) and 3 (specialist provider)], modes and evaluation of education/training in these components was extracted and evaluated.  

Results

From resources found thus far (n=17), we identified eight palliative and end-of-life care components: 1) need identification, 2) communication, 3) shared decision making, 4) advance care planning, 5) symptom management, 6) after-death care, 7) grief and bereavement, and 8) self-care. Of 10 Australian online educational resources identified, nine have free content, six are interactive, and four cover all components. Depth of learning is Tier 2 in seven resources and Tier 3 in one advance care planning resource. Seven resources incorporate evaluation at Kirkpatrick Model Level 1 (reaction) and/or Level 2 (knowledge). Most resources cite each other for additional learning, with CareSearch cited most.

Conclusions

This mapping process identified the online palliative and end-of-life care educational resources most appropriate for generalist staff. Our next steps are to map post-graduate curricula, conduct a baseline staff survey (structured on these components, levels and modes), and develop an evidence-based health network-level framework for staff education and training in palliative and end-of-life.