End-of-Life Care Curriculum in Medical Education

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): End-of-life care education in the United States has received minimal attention in medical school curriculum development. This deficit is particularly significant as the United States is becoming a country with an aging population. Cancer is the second leading cause of death and the incidence increases with age. To better meet the needs of our patients, we propose to develop, implement and evaluate an end-of-life care curriculum which will be integrated into the existing comprehensive medical curriculum at our institution. Our goal is to graduate medical professionals who possess the knowledge, attitudes, and skills required to effectively assess the end-of-life care needs of individuals with cancer and their families and to enable them to provide comprehensive, individualized and measurable end-of-life care prescriptions that foster quality of life. The specific aims of this grant are: 1. Review the existing University of Arizona College of Medicine curriculum and published curricula for cancer-related end-of-life care content. 2. Identify the core competencies of a cancer-related end-of-life care curriculum appropriate for our community and culture. 3. Review the University of Arizona College of Medicine curriculum for the identified core competencies of a cancer-related end-of-life care curriculum. 4. Develop learning objectives and teaching methodologies for the integrated cancer-related end-of-life care curriculum. 5. Design and implement evaluation studies to assess the quality of the core competencies and teaching methodologies and their impact on student learning. 6. Establish strategies to assure continuation of the cancer-related end-of-life care curriculum as a required component of future medical education. By careful evaluation of this curriculum, we hope to build upon current models of medical education by emonstrating its efficacy and transferability.