Development, Implementation, and Outcomes of a Serious Illness Care Community of Practice

Abstract

Context: Communities of Practice (CoP) can help geographically separated individuals who share a joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and a repertoire of tools to gain, maintain, and implement new skills, including serious illness communication.

Objectives: To investigate the health system uptake, implementation and outcomes of the Serious Illness Community of Practice (SICoP).

Methods: Participants included members of the online SICoP, including participants from all 50 states in the United States and 44 countries, interested in implementation of the Serious Illness Care Program. Yearly surveys asked members about their program's composition, completed trainings, number of serious illness conversations, and utilization of the online SICoP tools and resources.

Results: Over four years, membership in the SICoP increased from 429 to 1,912, with an estimated 17,785 clinicians trained and 38,945 serious illness conversations conducted. Members have continued to utilize and modify the SICoP resources.

Conclusions: Utilizing a CoP has contributed to improving the health care system implementation and process outcomes of serious illness communication training.

Key message: This article describes the implementation and health system outcomes of a Community of Practice developed to support serious illness communication. The results indicate that the membership of the community grew and that the community supported growth in the number of trained clinicians and the number of serious illness conversations conducted.

Keywords: Advance care planning; Communication skills training; Community of practice; Serious illness communication; Virtual community.