gms | German Medical Science

Modern health care increasingly calls on physicians to provide for high-quality care along with the traditional curative medical approach. However, undergraduate palliative care education programs are still underrepresentated and widely scientifically unexplored in Germany. At Witten/Herdecke University, a new evidence-based palliative care curriculum was integrated to lead students to a professional attitude towards the care of terminally-ill patients and their relatives. The development of the program was facilitated by an international literature review and by guidelines published by EAPC (European Association of Palliative Care) and DGP (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Palliativmedizin). Four major teaching categories could be extracted from the data: „ Patient“, Communication“, „Multidisciplinarity“ and „System“. All categories have the dimensions of knowledge, skills and attitudes and are taught based on feedback-oriented and interactive didactic methods (standardised patient contact, video-feedback, roleplay and supervised 1:1 patient interviews).

The curriculum comprises 33 teaching units and is offered to 4th year medical students. Using comparative analysis and content adaption we could reduce the additional workload for students undergoing the palliative care curriculum to 17 teaching units by integrating courses already given in the basic medical curriculum.

A detailed map of the curriculum is shown in table 1[Tab. 1].

Our oral presentation will introduce the evidence basis and the curriculum in detail and discuss the the strengths and weaknesses of several didactic methods in the context of pallaitve care education. The technique of supervised 1:1 interviews will be presented in detail and discussed with the audience.