SynthesisBMC medical education2016
Educational interventions to train healthcare professionals in end-of-life communication: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in BMC medical education, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 57 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
57 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The impact of the medical school admissions interview: a systematic review.Canadian medical education journal · 2024Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Post-graduate Medical Training in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: a Systematic Review.Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Training in communication skills for self-efficacy of health professionals: a systematic review.Human resources for health · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- A systematic review of the effects of advance care planning facilitators training programs.BMC health services research · 2019Pooled it
- Patient and clinician experience of a serious illness conversation guide in oncology: A descriptive analysis.Cancer medicine · 2020Trial
- Effect of the Serious Illness Care Program in Outpatient Oncology: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA internal medicine · 2019Trial
- Trial
- Trial
- Ethics of Futile Care: Who Decides When Enough Is Enough?-A Commentary From the Indian Context on Moral Distress in ICU Staff.Developing world bioethics · 2026Article
- Towards quality indicators in palliative care education: An umbrella review.Palliative care and social practice · 2026Review
- Observational Study on Enhancing End-of-Life Care Competence Through OSCE: Educational Implications.Medical science educator · 2025Article
- Staff's Knowledge and Self-Confidence in Difficult Communication: Evaluation of a Short Experiential-Based Training Program.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2025Article
- An Educational Initiative Describing Clinician Teachers' Experiences Following Serious Illness Communication Skills Faculty Development Training.Palliative medicine reports · 2025Article
- A mixed methods pilot study of a serious illness communication training curriculum among medical residents.Palliative care and social practice · 2025Article
- Do the teaching, practice and assessment of clinical communication skills align?BMC medical education · 2024Observational
- An Exploratory Study of Issues in Training Facilitators for Online Training in Advance Care Planning: Mixed Methods Research.Nursing reports (Pavia, Italy) · 2024Article
- Education modalities for serious illness communication training: A scoping review on the impact on clinician behavior and patient outcomes.Palliative medicine · 2024Article
- E-Module Learning for Scaling Serious Illness Communication Skills Teaching: A Pilot Study in Family Medicine and Palliative Care.Palliative medicine reports · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPracticing healthcare professionals and graduates exiting training programs are often ill-equipped to facilitate important discussions about end-of-life care with patients and their families. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions aimed at providing healthcare professionals with training in end-of-life communication skills, compared to usual curriculum.
methodsWe searched MEDLINE, Embase, CINAHL, ERIC and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials from the date of inception to July 2014 for randomized control trials (RCT) and prospective observational studies of educational training interventions to train healthcare professionals in end-of-life communication skills. To be eligible, interventions had to provide communication skills training related to end-of-life decision making; other interventions (e.g. breaking bad news, providing palliation) were excluded. Our primary outcomes were self-efficacy, knowledge and end-of-life communication scores with standardized patient encounters. Sufficiently similar studies were pooled in a meta-analysis. The quality of evidence was assessed using GRADE.
resultsOf 5727 candidate articles, 20 studies (6 RCTs, 14 Observational) were included in this review. Compared to usual teaching, educational interventions to train healthcare professionals in end-of-life communication skills were associated with greater self-efficacy (8 studies, standardized mean difference [SMD] 0.57;95% confidence interval [CI] 0.40-0.75; P < 0.001; very low quality evidence), more knowledge (4 studies, SMD 0.76;95% CI 0.40-1.12; p < 0.001; low quality evidence), and improvements in communication scores (8 studies, SMD 0.69; 95% CI 0.41-0.96; p < 0.001; very low quality evidence). There was insufficient evidence to determine whether these educational interventions affect patient-level outcomes.
conclusionVery low to low quality evidence suggests that end-of-life communication training may improve healthcare professionals' self-efficacy, knowledge, and EoL communication scores compared to usual teaching. Further studies comparing two active educational interventions are recommended with a continued focus on contextually relevant high-level outcomes.
trial registrationPROSPERO CRD42014012913.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.