Effectiveness of an Online End-of-Life Care Training Program on Health and Social Care Professionals

Abstract

Background: End-of-life care (EoLC) training curriculum targeting non-specialists is lacking. To fill this gap, the Jockey Club End-of-Life Community Care Project (JCECC) Community Psychosocial End-of-Life Care (EoLC) Program was developed. This is a 3-tier training program which was conducted through online learning for the Basic Module, while in a flipped-classroom format for the Intermediate and Advanced Modules. Organized around a EoLC competency framework with 7 domains, the Basic Module offered essential knowledge and skills of EoLC to health and social care professionals through seven discrete 1-hour online course corresponding to the 7 EoLC competencies. The 7 EoLC competencies encompass overarching knowledge and values, self-care, communication skills, optimizing physical comfort, psychosocial-spiritual care, EoL decision making, and bereavement care. Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of the Basic Module of the Program in enhancing EoLC competencies of health and social care professionals. Methods: Course participants were invited to complete online per-post assessment on their EoLC competencies using the 37-item Interdisciplinary EoLC competence Scale (IEoLCC). The scale has seven subscales correspond to the JCECC EoLC Competency Framework. Results: 692 participants in the Basic Module completed the pretest. Among them, between 151 and 330 completed individual domains of the Basic Module and the respective post-test. Paired t-tests showed significant increases in EoLC competence in all seven domains with large effect sizes ranging from 0.94 to 1.23, implying that the Basic online Module is highly efficacious in improving professionals’ EoLC competency. Conclusions: Short e-learning materials on EoLC can enhance health and social care professionals’ EoLC competencies.