Mind the Gap: Understanding Palliative Care Clinician Attitudes Toward Mental Health Training.

Palliative care (PC) clinicians provide mental healthcare to individuals with serious illnesses. Despite this, there is limited knowledge regarding their mental health training opportunities. To identify predictors of satisfaction with mental health training opportunities and assess the relationship between training opportunities and clinician comfort in managing mental health comorbidities, we conducted a secondary analysis of a nationwide survey involving 708 PC clinicians. Satisfaction with mental health training was moderate (M = 2.75/5, SD = .915). Access to lectures/webinars was the most common training opportunity (54%). Significant predictors of satisfaction with training included access to lectures/webinars (β = .328, <.001) and case discussions (β = .231, = .007). Academic practice settings and satisfactory mental health referrals were associated with a greater number of different training opportunities. Clinicians in academic settings had higher odds of accessing various training opportunities, such as lectures/webinars (OR = 2.58, <.001) and longitudinal training pathways (OR = 4.51, <.001). A moderate, positive correlation was found between training satisfaction and comfort in managing mental health comorbidities (r = .30, <.001). This study is among the first to elucidate factors influencing PC clinicians' satisfaction with mental health training. Low-resource training opportunities, such as webinars and lectures, significantly predict satisfaction, suggesting the potential of these scalable solutions to enhance training. The findings underscore the importance of expanding evidence-based mental health training for PC clinicians to improve patient care.