Expanding Access to Palliative Care through Tailored Training for Clinicians

Four clinicians sit around a table and smile

Source: CAPC

Palliative care focuses on providing relief for people living with a serious illness, with a goal of improving quality of life for patients and their families. The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) works to make palliative care more broadly available to patients across the United States by improving the skills and knowledge of clinicians who serve seriously ill patients and their families.

One year ago, with support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), CAPC dramatically expanded the scope of its online training resources for clinicians. From a previous average of 9,000 CAPC courses taken each month, the launch of the new platform saw the monthly average jump to 12,000. All told, CAPC has trained over 50,000 clinicians since 2015.
With SNF support, CAPC added training pathways tailored to specific groups of medical professionals, like oncologists, and to different patient populations, such as patients with dementia. Other new resources support clinicians making safe opioid prescription decisions.

CAPC’s website was redesigned for ease of use, and it became more visible to health professions through inclusion in annual certification credits and a nationwide communications campaign. CAPC continues to enrich its website with new courses and features.

CAPC was established in 1999, originally as a National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. SNF has provided previous support to the organization in its efforts to expand the availability of palliative care. The Foundation has also supported palliative care efforts in Greece, including a study of needs in Greece coordinated by the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance.