Do learners implement what they learn? Commitment-to-change following an interprofessional palliative care course

Abstract

Background: Palliative care educators should incorporate strategies that enhance application into practice by learners. Commitment-to-change is an approach to reinforce learning and encourage application into practice; immediately post-course learners commit to making changes in their practices as a result of participating in the course ("statements") and then several weeks or months later are prompted to reflect on their commitments ("reflections").

Aim: Explore if and how learners implemented into practice what they learned in a palliative care course, using commitment-to-change reflections.

Design: Secondary analysis of post-course commitment statements and 4-months post-course commitment reflections submitted online by learners who participated in Pallium Canada's interprofessional, 2-day, Learning Essential Approaches to Palliative Care (LEAP) Core courses.

Setting/participants: Primary care providers from across Canada and different profession who attended LEAP Core courses from 1 April 2015 to 31 March 2017.

Results: About 1063 of 4636 learners (22.9%) who participated in the 244 courses delivered during the study period submitted a total of 4250 reflections 4 months post-course. Of these commitments, 3081 (72.5%) were implemented. The most common implemented commitments related to initiating palliative care early across diseases, pain and symptom management, use of clinical instruments, advance care planning, and interprofessional collaboration. Impact extended to patients, services, and colleagues. Barriers to implementation into practice included lack of time, and system-level factors such as lack of support by managers and untrained colleagues.

Conclusions: Examples of benefits to patients, families, services, colleagues, and themselves were described as a result of participating in the courses.

Keywords: Palliative care; commitment to change; continuing education; evaluation; interdisciplinary studies; interprofessional.