A needs assessment for a palliative care curriculum

To ensure the success of a new curriculum at an institution, information ab out the educational needs of learners, available resources, and potential o bstacles needs to be systematically collected and analyzed prior to the dev elopment and implementation of the actual curriculum. This process, known a s needs assessment, is important in the development of palliative care trai ning-for internal medicine residents, because internal medicine has only re cently begun to address these issues in a formalized way and palliative car e is a relatively new topic in medical education and clinical medicine. The refore, institutional issues and resistance, lack of knowledge and appropri ate attitudes among trainees and faculty, a-nd a paucity of educational mod els for individual internal medicine training programs present potential ob stacles. Although curricula that have been developed by national organizati ons can serve as "guideposts," these documents am unable to address the spe cific needs and culture of an individual institution. This paper outlines a systematic methodology of needs assessment for palliative care curricula a t individual institutions that could be applied to the development and impl ementation of palliative care training for different groups of learners. An institution-specific needs assessment was developed based upon the finding s of a systematic literature review and interviews with experts in palliati ve medicine and medical education. The following methods were utilized: 1) an anonymous survey; 2) focus groups; 3) topic rankings; and 4) individual interviews. The needs assessment revealed the following educational, clinic al, and institutional information: I) interns had very little exposure to p alliative care in medical school; 2) there was no formalized system for for mal education and clinical exposure; 3) tremendous interest in palliative c are education existed; 4) patients, families, physicians, and nurses percei ved a need to improve the quality of palliative care; and 5) there are seve ral political, logistical, and resource (time and financial) obstacles that needed to be addressed. An institution-specific needs assessment is an imp ortant part of the successful development and implementation of any new cur riculum for medical residents and was specifically necessary for our pallia tive care program. As a result of the the needs assessment process, a curri culum consisting of ten units of case-based and problem-based teaching was successfully implemented. J Pain Symptom Manage 2000;20;408-416. (C) U.S. C ancer Pain Relief Committee, 2000.