• Jina Kang, Yeol Kim, Yang Suk Yoo, Jin Young Choi, Su Jin Koh, Hyun Jung Jho, Youn Seon Choi, Jeanno Park, Do Ho Moon, Do Yeun Kim, Yun Jung, Won Chul Kim, Seung Hee Lim, Seung Joo Hwang, Sang Ok Choe, and Desiree Jones.
• Hospice & Palliative Care Branch, National Cancer Center, 323 Ilsan-ro, Ilsandong-gu, Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do, 410-769, Republic of Korea.
• Support Care Cancer. 2013 Oct 1;21(10):2707-17.

PurposeCompetency-based assessment helps to improve performance and to standardize education programs for hospice and palliative care professionals. This paper aims to report the process and results of developing the hospice and palliative care competencies by multidisciplinary experts in Korea.MethodsThe competency development task force team of Korean hospice and palliative care professionals was comprised of seven physicians, four nurses, two social workers, and two clergy. To build consensus regarding competencies, the team performed a two-round Delphi survey. The importance of competency domains was assessed by using a 5-point Likert scale. After the completion of the Delphi survey, final competency domains were decided in a consensus meeting.ResultsThe competencies were composed of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. The competency domains were identified as the following: 11 domains and 16 subdomains for physicians, 11 domains for nurses, 5 domains and 15 subdomains for social workers, as well as 3 domains and 5 subdomains for spiritual care providers. The high importance domains were different by specialties. Physical care and treatment for physicians, symptom management for nurses, bereavement care for social workers, and communication for spiritual care providers were ranked as highly important. For nurses and spiritual care providers, attitude-related domains were ranked the highest in importance.ConclusionThe competencies developed by multidisciplinary professionals are useful to identify the appropriate roles of each hospice and palliative care specialist involved in a team approach to patient care.

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