End-of-Life Essentials education modules: a quality and safety initiative to improve health professionals end-of-life care knowledge, skills, attitude and confidence

Abstract

Background There is a need for expanded end-of-life (EOL) care education and resources for health professionals in acute hospitals to help them increase EOL care skills and knowledge, and build capacity and confidence to provide high-quality EOL care. End-of-Life Essentials (EOLE) is an Australian government-funded project, which offers free peer-reviewed online education modules and implementation resources on EOL care to health professionals in acute hospitals, aiming to help support the provision of high-quality EOL care.Methods The development of EOLE education modules included seven major steps and two peer-review processes. In total, ten EOLE education modules and associated toolkits had been developed by the end of 2018. To evaluate the effectiveness of EOLE education modules, premodule and postmodule survey data from all ten modules and registration data were extracted from the EOLE learning management system for a 4-month period. The significance of difference in learners’ self-perceived EOL care knowledge, skills, attitude and confidence before and after module learning were tested by Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests.Results Results from Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Tests revealed statistically significant improvement in learners’ self-perceived EOL care knowledge, skill, attitude and confidence after completion of EOLE modules regardless of their discipline (p<0.001). The learners from different disciplines also reported a high level of intention (median=4, IQR=1) to change their practice after completion of EOLE module learning.Conclusion The evaluation results show a positive impact of EOLE module learning on allied health professionals, doctors and nurses, suggesting that EOLE could be a reliable and accessible online EOL care education resources for health professionals of all disciplines to improve their EOL care knowledge, skills and confidence, build up their capacities in providing quality EOL care to patients and their families, in turn, improve the quality and safety of EOL care in health settings.