Palliative Care Simulation: Nurturing Interprofessional Collegiality

Introduction: Interprofessional collaboration is essential to ensure safe and effective patient-centred care. Health care students need to gain an understanding of the roles played by interprofessional team members to provide optimal care at the end-of-life. Interprofessional education and simulation are becoming important strategies in providing health care students with opportunities to learn interprofessionally. However, there is limited evidence in the literature on interprofessional simulation, and more specifically on interprofessional end-of-life care simulation. The aim of this research project was to provide students from four health care disciplines from the School of Health at a rural Australian university with an opportunity to experience simulated interprofessional end-of-life care. This paper will discuss the qualitative results obtained from student evaluations following an interprofessional workshop. Methods: Fifteen undergraduate students from nursing, social work, medicine and pharmacy volunteered to attend an experiential workshop on palliative care. The central approach to learning during the workshop was a simulation scenario. Following the 15-minute simulation scenario, a debriefing session was used to understand the student's experiences. Participants also completed a short evaluation survey that included both qualitative and quantitative responses. Results: Several themes emerged from this study; the most dominant theme was recognition by participants of the importance of supportive and respectful interprofessional teamwork in palliative care. Conclusion: Palliative care simulation provides one strategy to provide insight into palliative care in critical care using an interprofessional approach.