In Kyoto, we held the first “Palliative care workshop for physicians engaged in clinical practice for cancer treatment” in Japan on June 7-8, 2008 under the directive of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. There were 163 participants in the workshop, including 56 physicians and 107 voluntarily participating healthcare professionals (77 nurses, 23 pharmacists and 7 other medical professionals). We analyzed the results of tests consisting of 25 questions classified into 7 categories based on their contents. Tests were administered before and after the workshop (pre-test and post-test), and the educational effects of our conference were evaluated by examining changes in test scores. Participants other than physicians, nurses and pharmacists were excluded from analysis of the test scores because comprehensive medical knowledge was required to solve the questions. The mean rates of correct answers on pre- and post-test were 87.9% for physicians (total 78.9%) and 94.6% for physicians (total 89.1%), respectively. The scores were markedly increased after the workshop, showing practical significance of our attempt. However, the percentage of correct answers regarding psychological symptoms was lowest for physicians as well as for other healthcare professionals on both pre- and post-test. These findings strongly suggest that the workshops produced a sufficient educational effect, but improvement in individual training systems is considered necessary, especially in fields related to psychological manifestations. Palliat Care Res 2010; 5(2): 152-161

The mortality rate of pediatric out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is more than 80% in Japan, which is markedly higher than that in adults. Basic life support (BLS) by bystanders is essential for preventing sudden cardiac death. In the model core curriculum for pharmaceutical education in 2024, students must acquire the ability to ensure public health. As part of our educational policy, pharmacy students provide a workshop on infant BLS. This workshop is incorporated after the PUSH course, an authorized training program for BLS focused on chest compressions and AED use of people over elementary school age, for convenience. We herein investigated whether infant BLS training promoted the comprehension of and motivation to perform BLS for infants and assessed the educational relevance of pharmacy students serving as instructors of the BLS training course. Questionnaire responses were obtained from participants before and after the workshop. The majority of participants were college students and childcare workers. Knowledge of infant BLS by childcare workers was significantly more extensive than that by the other participants; however, overall understanding of infant BLS and the motivation to contribute to it increased irrespective of participant backgrounds. Overall improvement was also observed in the items necessary to implement BLS excluding artificial ventilation even though the instructions were given only by pharmacy students. The present results demonstrate that infant BLS training effectively enhanced public motivation to perform BLS for infants with cardiac arrest.