Objective:

 This study aims to characterize the current practice of providing neuropalliative care education among neurology residency and fellowship programs, and to identify barriers to this type of training.

Background:

Patients with neurologic disease have a variety of unmet palliative care needs. Both the ACGME and AAN have emphasized the need for neuropalliative care education in recent years. Neurology training programs have widely variable practices in teaching neuropalliative care.

Design/Methods:

We surveyed program directors of neurology residency and fellowship training programs in the United States regarding their current methods of teaching neuropalliative care education, relevant subspecialty resources, and perceived importance of palliative care topics in their curriculum.

Results:

The survey was emailed to 728 program directors and fellowship directors. We received 112 survey responses after excluding 5 responses. Program directors generally perceived neuropalliative care education to be important, with the median rank of importance rated a 7 out of 10. Topics emphasized varied widely according to subspecialty. Most respondents highlighted barriers such as inadequate trainee time and inadequate teaching faculty availability.

Conclusions:

Neurology training programs continue to have a great deal of variability in palliative care education curricula. While most programs reported palliative care presence in their institutions, variability exists in the amount of palliative care education taught, the topics emphasized, and methods of teaching. Neurology residency and fellowship directors may benefit from making use of existing neuropalliative care curricula to enhance, partnering with local non-neurology faculty for teaching palliative topics, and incorporating palliative topics into subspecialty training.