Junior doctors’ learning and development in foundation year 1 posts in palliative medicine

Abstract

F1 posts in palliative medicine in the UK have positive influences on perceived generic skills development and practice. These findings might encourage the development of more rotations incorporating palliative medicine in the future.

Junior Doctors’ Views of How Their Undergraduate Clinical Electives in Palliative Care Influenced Their Current Practice of Medicine

“…Furthermore, the methodologies employed and the points of assessment have limited the acknowledgment of the complexity of the experiences, particularly in the transition to junior doctors. 16 Our study provides a qualitative perspective to explore how junior doctors retrospectively view the benefits of undergraduate palliative care attachments. The attachments are clinical electives of three or four weeks, where medical students participate as if they were junior medical officers.…”

Education and Training: Perceived educational impact, ­challenges and opportunities of hospice placements for foundation year doctors: a qualitative study

“…6,7,8 As other studies in similar settings have found, participants valued experiential, informal learning opportunities, particularly when interacting with patients and other staff. 9,10,16,17 Here, this experiential learning was achieved with suitable support from staff, but in other studies learning on the job has been described by junior doctors as being through making mistakes and being 'thrown in at the deep end'. 5,10 F1s placed emphasis on the role of senior doctors in informal learning.…”

“…Although already extant, this finding underlines the important educative role senior doctors have in supporting and teaching newly qualified doctors. 10,14,17 Some of the most valued learning opportunities were patient-related, for example, when given responsibility to do challenging tasks such as clerking new patients. Other research has also identified the importance of patient (or client)-centred tasks, being given responsibility and completing challenging tasks when learning in a workplace.…”

“…5,13 All participants felt that their hospice placement had or would change their practice, mainly through acquisition of transferable skills such as communication skills, improved recognition of dying and management of symptoms, findings in keeping with previous research. 17 Only one participant believed that palliative care skills were not required in his current specialty (general surgery -in which other studies have shown palliative care can be sub-optimal). 9,10 In contrast to other studies, although participants acknowledged emotional toll and lack of peer support as potentially challenging, none had been personally affected by these for varying reasons.…”

“…16 Another study involved six F1s mostly in split oncology and palliative medicine hospital posts, where it was reported that although such placements helped develop skills in diagnosing dying and breaking bad news, split posts and on-call rotas could detract from the positive educational experience. 17 The current study took an interpretivist approach aiming to explore individual F1 opinion of hospice placements, in order to provide some insight into this under-researched area.…”