The landscape of postgraduate education in palliative care for general practitioners: results of a nationwide survey in Flanders, Belgium

Abstract

Objective: To describe the offer of continuing medical education (CME) in palliative care in Flanders, Belgium and to explore the way providers of CME address the preferences of general practitioners (GP's) towards CME.

Methods: Questionnaire-survey among official providers of formal CME.

Results: The response rate was 43%, equally distributed over all 5 provinces of Flanders. Data show large content gaps, an under usage of appropriate educational techniques and an absence of evaluation of the impact of CME on clinical practice. Providers of CME explain how they take the preferences of GP's concerning education in palliative care into account.

Conclusions: The present offer of CME is insufficient to educate GP's in palliative care. The absence of quality criteria and the lack of coordination between different providers results in an unattractive labyrinth of courses leaving GP's and their patients in the cold.

Practice implications: A comprehensive offer of CME sessions should be installed in a coordination between all providers. This could render the use of means (logistics and speakers) more efficient. Further research could look into other ways of acquiring palliative care competences such as evaluating the learning effect of GP's working together with specialized palliative home care teams.