'A Lion in the House' Module for Health Care Education: Pediatric End-of-Life Case Studies

Authors

Julia Reichert, Wright State University - Main Campus
Dean Parmelee, Wright State University - Main CampusFollow
Steve Bognar, Wright State University - Main Campus
Karen Durgans
Melissa Godoy

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2-14-2012

Abstract

Justin's Story is part of Pediatric End-of-Life Case Studies, one of seven teaching modules drawn from the Emmy Award-winning documentary, A Lion in the House. A Lion in the House portrays an unprecedented, intimate look at the realities of childhood cancer through the journeys of five families and their professional caregivers over the course of 6 years. Justin's Story provides a forum for open-ended discussion and consideration of compassionate approaches for navigating pediatric end-of-life. It offers content that is unpredictable and not always best practice. Learners reflect on the complex impact of childhood cancer on Justin, his family, and their professional caregivers. Justin's Story is designed in consultation with top cancer organizations, leading professionals, and medical educators to improve quality of teaching and learning, to enhance patient care, and fulfill competencies required by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, among others. The module is flexible and can be used for self-directed learning or with professionals in classroom or other settings, such as grand rounds. It embraces a humanistic perspective, with awareness of class, race, and cultural difference. Justin's Story is a case study made up of lively intimate movie clips, competencies, and objectives, discussion questions, take-home points, recommended reading/resource lists, and a PowerPoint presentation. From November 2008 through October 2009, 2,168 participants were exposed to the modules, mostly through conference trainings and classrooms. Additionally, 1,100 pediatric nurses were trained in courses using the A Lion in the House modules through the End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium Pediatric Palliative Care train-the-trainer sessions. Six-hundred and twenty-nine participants were trained in 13 different forums from 37 states, with 391 completing evaluation surveys. Of these, respondents to the Pediatric End-of-Life Module surveys (n = 205) reported the following improvements: 65.4% were more likely to draw upon the strengths of the full health care team to communicate sensitively with the patient's family at child end-of-life; 67.3% would better integrate a family's religious and/or spiritual health care beliefs into discussions of treatment options; 95.6% were more sensitive to the balance between involving the family in decision-making and placing inappropriate burdens for these decisions on parents; and 92.7% would be more aware of their own personal reactions regarding death and dying.

Comments

This is an open-access publication distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike license.

Repository Citation

Reichert, J., Parmelee, D., Bognar, S., Durgans, K., & Godoy, M. (2012). 'A Lion in the House' Module for Health Care Education: Pediatric End-of-Life Case Studies. MedEdPortal.
https://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/med_education/97

DOI

10.15766/mep_2374-8265.8362