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. 2022 Aug 8;3(1):123-131.
doi: 10.1089/pmr.2021.0086. eCollection 2022.

Advance Care Planning and Communication Skills Improve after an Interprofessional Team Simulation with Standardized Patients

Leah S Millstein  1   2 , Paula Rosenblatt  1 , Melissa H Bellin  3 , Laura Whitney  3 , Steven R Eveland  4 , Mei Ching Lee  5 , John Allen  1 , Heather L Mutchie  1 , Todd D Becker  3 , John Cagle  3
Affiliations

Advance Care Planning and Communication Skills Improve after an Interprofessional Team Simulation with Standardized Patients

Leah S Millstein et al. Palliat Med Rep. .

Abstract

Background: Improving rates of advance care planning (ACP) and advance directive completion is a recognized goal of health care in the United States. No prior study has examined the efficacy of standardized patient (SP)-based student interprofessional ACP trainings.

Objectives: The present study aims to evaluate an interprofessional approach to ACP education using SP encounters.

Design: We designed a pre-post evaluation of an innovative interprofessional ACP training curriculum using multimodal adult learning techniques to test the effects of completing ACP discussions with SPs. Three surveys (pre-training T1, post-training T2, and post-clinical encounter T3) evaluated student knowledge, Communication Self-Efficacy (CSES), ACP self-efficacy, and interprofessional teamwork (using SPICE-R2).

Setting/subjects: Students from the schools of medicine, nursing, and social work attended three training modules and two SP encounters focused on ACP.

Measurements/results: During academic year 2018-2019, 36 students participated in the training at University of Maryland. Results demonstrated statistically significant improvements in ACP self-efficacy, M T1 = 2.9 (standard deviation [SD]T1 = 0.61) compared with M T3 = 3.9 (SDT3 = 0.51), p < 0.001, and CSES, M T1 = 4.6 (SDT1 = 1.35) versus M T3 = 7.3 (SDT3 = 0.51), p < 0.001, from T1 to T3. There was a medium-to-large improvement in knowledge from an average score of 4.3 (SD = 1.0) at T1 to an average score of 5.5 (SD = 1.4) at T2, p = 0.005, d = 0.67.

Conclusions: Our interprofessional training module and SP encounter was successful in improving medical, social work, and nursing students' self-reported communication skills and knowledge regarding ACP.

Keywords: advance care planning; graduate medical education; interprofessional education; standardized patients.

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Conflict of interest statement

Heather Mutchie has a T32 grant that requires disclosure on all publications (T32 AG000262).

Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
Study flow (n = 36).
FIG. 2.
FIG. 2.
Effect sizes of the changes in primary measures across time points. ACP, advance care planning; ACP-SE, Advance Care Planning Self-Efficacy; CSES, Communication Self-Efficacy; SPICE-R2, Student Perceptions of Interprofessional Clinical Education–Revised 2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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