Mandatory Palliative Care Education for Surgical Residents: Initial Focus on Teaching Pain Management

BACKGROUND: Knowledge concerning palliative care and the associated skills, including effective pain control, is essential for surgeons who treat cancer patients in daily practice. This study focuses on a palliative care training course that has been mandatorily conducted for all surgical residents of our hospital since 2009. METHODS: We evaluated the effectiveness of our mandatory palliative care training course by conducting a retrospective study of the patients' medical records and participants' questionnaire results and discussed the importance of palliative care education for surgical residents. RESULTS: All 12 surgical residents who participated in the course in 2009 had graduated 4–9 years back. They were assigned to look after a total of 92 cases (average, 7.66 cases per resident) during the course. The purpose of care in most cases (92.3%) was to mitigate pain. Introducing analgesic adjuvants such as gabapentin or amitriptyline accounted for the largest part of initial interventions (23.9%) aimed at controlling cancer pain, followed by changes in route of administration or doses of prior opioid analgesics (21.7%). Interventions with opioid analgesics were conducted most frequently (47.7%). The overall pain improvement rate was 89.1%. We used a questionnaire after the course to evaluate its effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: The surgical residents stated that it was a meaningful course through which they gained practical knowledge on palliative care and that the experience would change their approach to home care.