Introduction: Paramedics are being increasingly dispatched to community palliative and end-of-life care (EoLC) patients (Kirk et al., 2017). Despite this, paramedics consistently report a lack of confidence in treating these patient populations (Blackmore, 2022). Sufficient education in these areas has been identified as a key enabler to the provision of adequate care for these patients by paramedics (Pentaris & Mehmet, 2019). Scotland has recently moved to a degree-based training programme for paramedics, and it has yet to be assessed whether or not paramedics qualifying in Scotland are being educated adequately in the physiology underpinning palliative and EoLC topics. We have previously reported that paramedic curriculum guidance had more reference to these topics than that for many other healthcare professions (Scott et al., 2023).
Aims: To review and analyse palliative and EoLC physiology education within the five Scottish undergraduate paramedic degrees and compare it to the recommendations made by the relevant educational guidance.
Methods: Information gathered from publicly accessible online curriculum documents and data collected by contacting course representatives from each university was screened for information regarding the following: (1) Content delivered in modules relating to palliative and EoLC; (2) Teaching techniques used to deliver palliative ad EoLC teaching content; (3) Number of hours dedicated to the delivery of palliative and EoLC material. A thematic analysis was carried out on the data collected regarding course content to gain a comprehensive summary of the educational framework in Scotland. This was compared to the educational recommendations identified.
Results: When compared to the educational guidance, 5 of the identified recommendations were met by ≥2 universities, 3 were only met by 1 university each, and 1 recommendation did not appear to be met by any of the courses studied. Teaching techniques used included lectures, tutorials/workshops, seminars, simulations and self-directed study. The mean teaching time dedicated to this content was 12.9±8.47 hours.
Conclusion: Scottish undergraduate paramedic courses largely met the education guidance for palliative and EoLC physiology teaching, however there is scope for implementing further interactive teaching sessions focussing on these topics to address the gaps in the existing framework and further develop student confidence in these areas of practice. This work has led to the design of a potential high-fidelity simulation session in an attempt to address these issues. We hope to deliver such simulations in the near future to continue this work.