From the 21 – 23 July 2020, EDUPALL delivered a series of free webinars with leading palliative care clinicians and teachers

Dr Daniela Mosoiu – EDUPALL Project Director, explains…

We are delighted to present a series of webinars based on The EDUPALL Erasmus project.  A group of international experts from Romania, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, UK and Spain have produced a blended palliative care curriculum for medical students based on the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) recommendations and they’ve prepared a range of materials to support the delivery of this novel programme.

The curriculum and trainers’ toolkit was finalised prior to the COVID-19 outbreak and it has been challenging to implement the programme during the lockdown.  It was extremely useful that the programme was designed to be delivered as a blended format; but partners had to adapt to the new social reality so seminars which were to be delivered using a face-to-face format were transferred to online seminars. Students’ performances have been assessed and their opinions have been sought on the programme.

We wanted to share the EDUPALL experience with all of those interested in education through this series of webinars and videos of the webinars are now available:

Webinar 1 Tuesday 21 July – Curriculum building and mentoring in undergraduate palliative car education

Moderator: Dr Julie Ling CEO EAPC

Speakers:

  • Associate Professor Daniela Mosoiu, Transilvania University, Romania – ‘The EDUPALL curriculum development – process and content
  • Dr Stephen Mason, University of Liverpool, UK – ‘Developing a mentoring programme in palliative care in undergraduate education’

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Webinar II, Wednesday 22 July – Novel teaching methods for palliative care education

Moderator: Professor Frank Elsner, Universitätsklinikum Aachen, Germany

Speakers:   

  • Professor José Pereira, Director, Division of Palliative Care, Department of Family Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada – ‘Pivoting to Virtual Learning in Canada’
  • Assistant Professor Antonio Noguera, Atlantes Research Program, Institute for Culture and Society of the University of Navarra, Spain – ‘Visual art in teaching’
  • Professor Frank Elsner, Universitätsklinikum Aachen, Germany – ‘Patients as Teachers’
  • Dr Mhoira Leng, Cairdeas International Palliative Care Trust; Makerere University, Uganda –‘Palliative Care in stage: Neural pain pathways by drama’
  • Dr Tania Pastrana (Universitätsklinikum Aachen, Germany): ‘Bus rounds – Patients at home’

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Webinar III, Thursday 23 July – Performance assessment in palliative care education

Moderator: Dr Cathy Payne, AIIHPC, Ireland

Speakers:

  • Dr Piret Paal, WHO Collaborating Centre, Institute of Nursing Science and Practice, Paracelsus Medical University in Salzburg, Austria – ‘How to measure performance in education’
  • Associate Professor Vlad Poroch, University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Iasi, Romania – ‘Students’ feedback and perception regarding their experience during completing palliative care module’

Edupall Webinars – Implementation of EDUPALL Curriculum in medical undergraduate education – second part of the multiplier event in Romanian

On the 19 – 23 October 2020 HOSPICE Casa Sperantei organized a series of webinars each afternoon between 4 pm-8 pm, in Romanian. The aim of the webinars was to present the EDUPALL curriculum and outline how it was implemented in the project’s partners medical faculties in Romania.

The target audience was academic staff from all other medical faculties in Romania, whether associated partners or not, and medical faculty from Republic of Moldavia. An invitation of the event was sent alongside with a free registration form.

The webinars were organized as course and seminar (2 hours each), focused on highlighting the resources for academic staff and included:

Day 1 – Presentation of the project; Seminar – Introduction to palliative care and palliative care as integrated discipline and types of services

Day 2 – Course – Communication – general abilities; Seminar – Communicating bad news

Day 3 – Course – Pain-classification and physiopathology; Seminar – Pain-assessment and management

Day 4 – Course  – Principles of symptoms management; Seminar – Bereavement in palliative care

Day 5 – Feedback from participants; resolution for advocating inclusion of palliative care as a mandatory discipline in medical and nursing undergraduate education; organization of rolling out the educational materials

41 delegates participated from 11 medical faculties from Romania and Republic of Moldavia, among which 12 were representing partners in the project.

After the event, participants completed an evaluation form (on surveymonkey.com) of the event. The majority attendees (80%) rated the quality of the week programme as excellent. Over 85% of participants are willing to use lesson plans, online courses, use of technology, mentoring toolkit and innovative teaching and novel assessment methods. All participants intend to sign a collaboration protocol for receiving EDUPALL materials.