Family physicians play an integral role in providing palliative care and supporting patients and their families with advanced illness. The Palliative Care eLearning Program aims to improve your knowledge and skills in palliative and end-of-life care, and support your involvement with local and regional palliative care initiatives.
Each online module, facilitated by a palliative care expert, focuses on individual competency-based assessment and collaborative knowledge building discourse. Patient cases and an extensive library of resources are used to support knowledge translation to practice, to help you to perform a palliative care assessment with the most up-to-date tools and create a coherent treatment plan that addresses patient, family, and caregiver needs. The modules will review palliative care resources and tools and how they can be incorporated into practice to ensure efficient and comprehensive assessments. The necessity of effective communication will also be covered throughout the modules.
Learn how to identify patients in your practice that would benefit from a palliative approach to their care. Upon completion of this program, you'll be equipped to appropriately assess and manage pain and other symptoms, recognize palliative care emergencies, discuss goals of care, and consider psychosocial needs of patients with advanced illness. In addition, develop strategies for physician self-care, life-long learning, and maintaining a sustainable practice.
Program Objectives
- Identify patients in your practice that would benefit from a palliative approach to their care
- Perform a palliative care assessment and create a coherent treatment plan that addresses patient, family and caregiver needs and understand how to work and communicate with patients, families and their interdisciplinary care team
- Identify palliative care resources (e.g. CCAC, Speak Up, etc.) and screening tools (e.g. PPS, ESAS, etc.) and be able to incorporate them in your practice
- Assess and manage pain, including prescribing opioids effectively, using adjuvants, and refer to a specialist when required
- Identify and manage common symptoms experienced by patients with advanced illnesses (e.g. shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, constipation, and fatigue)
- Recognize and manage common palliative care emergencies (e.g. SCC, hypercalcemia, bowel obstruction, etc.)
- Identify and manage the psychosocial spiritual needs of patients with advanced illnesses
- Discuss goals of care with patients and their families and understand the importance of communicating patients’ goals to all caregivers in the health care team
- Manage patients in the last hours and days of life
- Develop strategies for physician self-care, life-long learning, and sustainable practice
Description & Time Commitment
The Palliative Care eLearning Program is composed of 2 virtual synchronous online sessions and 6 online modules for collaborative knowledge building.
The 2 virtual synchronous online sessions are 3-hours each and provide an introduction to palliative care and symptoms other than pain. The sessions will be held using an online conferencing platform.
The web-based modules focus on clinical case scenarios and require participation in asynchronous online discussion. Each module is facilitated online by a palliative care expert over 1 month. Plan to devote approximately 4 hours per month to online collaborative knowledge building and individual reading.
Also embedded within the program is a series of interactive formative feedback exercises to help you identify your individual learning needs and to help you translate new knowledge to your practice.