Podcast Tag: palliative care

Episode 15: Addressing a Critical Gap: Standardizing Primary Palliative Care Education with New Cases

Guest: April Zehm, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Oncology) at the Medical College of Wisconsin specializing in hospice and palliative medicine and Aquifer Palliative Care Leadership Team Co-Academic Lead.

Foundational skills in communication, symptom management, transitions of care, and interprofessional collaborations are critical in improving the quality of life of patients with serious illnesses–but most health professions students don’t receive standardized education in these key principles of primary palliative care. In this episode, Dr. April Zehm describes the Aquifer Palliative Care Leadership team’s creation of a national standardized curriculum and soon-to-be available online palliative care course focused on preparing students to provide high quality patient-centered care. She will also discuss how faculty can integrate course resources into their pre-clinical and clinical teaching.

Full show notes can be found here.

Facilitated Discussions and Role Playing Using Standardized Cases

Guest: Kirstin Nackers, MD, Assistant Professor and Director of Pediatric Undergraduate Medical Education at University of Wisconsin-Madison

In this episode, Dr. Kirstin Nackers shares two examples of case-based instruction she uses to increase student engagement and promote learning in an integrated core clerkship combining Pediatrics, Obstetrics & Gynecology and Geriatrics. She describes the first example as a “COVID-induced improvement”, recalling that when COVID restrictions prevented students from learning about diagnosis and treatment of patients with fever in actual clinical contexts, she turned to Aquifer’s fever case to teach this core content. The lesson she learned was that using a single case enabled her to improve teaching sessions by developing a standardized discussion guide that faculty facilitators could use to focus interactive discussion and better ensure achievement of session learning objectives. The second way she uses cases is to develop role plays for a session designed to teach students about abuse, neglect, and mandated reporting. The goal of the session is not only to increase students’ knowledge about mandated reporting requirements – but to increase students’ comfort talking about those tough topics with patients. She has found that an engaging way to master communication skills is through practice with role play followed by structured debriefing.

Full show notes can be found here.