136Does an Interactive, Teleconference-Delivered, Palliative Care Lecture Series Empower Nursing Home Staff to Manage Patients More Autonomously?

Abstract

Background: ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a form of online interactive teaching, which has gained international traction. Teleconferencing technology is used to allow experts at a "Hub" to audio visually teach and interact with many different front‐line Healthcare Providers at "Spoke" centres. Emphasis is on stakeholder directed interaction and encouragement of spoke‐spoke engagement. This project evaluates the effectiveness of the first such pilot for the Republic of Ireland, which is occurring in the south Dublin region. It consists of specialist topics over 10 sessions around Palliative Care. Our aim is to measure project success by quantifying gains in staff confidence at managing such issues. Methods: A subgroup of nursing homes was randomly selected for assessment. The contact person in each nursing home provided staff with Likert‐style questionnaires to assess confidence before the lecture (pre‐questionnaire), directly after (post‐questionnaire) and six weeks after. The first two lectures of the series have been completed: advance care planning (ACP) and nutrition and hydration (N&H). Results: We present the data from the first two lectures in the series. 22 nursing homes and 130 staff participated in the sessions. Of 6 randomly selected nursing homes and 39 staff, their pre‐lecture questionnaire confidence in managing ACP was 6.2/10 (SD 1.8) while their post‐lecture confidence score was 7.7/10 (SD 1.4) (25% increase), p < 0.0005. Pre‐lecture questionnaire confidence score in managing N&H was 6.8/10 (SD 2.4) and post‐lecture score was 8.6/10 (SD 1) (27% increase), p < 0.0005. All staff groups (nursing vs. non‐nursing) exhibited equal confidence gains (p = 0.4) and years spent in the role was not a predictor of confidence change (p = 0.75). Conclusions: The first two lectures of this interactive, novel, ten‐lecture series significantly improved nursing home staff confidence in managing palliative care situations. Sixweek participant follow up is planned to identify sustained benefit.