Many palliative care organisations use journal clubs to support educational development for staff. However, to date, the potential to use journal clubs to directly improve clinical care in hospices (through quality improvement activity) has not been described in the literature.

In January 2019, we established  fortnightly journal club meetings, which provided staff with the opportunity to present hospice-relevant palliative care research. the aim of our journal club was to through which aimed to (1) develop research questions to clinical care problems in the hospice and (2) identify solutions to these problems to improve care delivery. In these meetings, we discussed the main findings, clinical practice implications and future research questions. Initially, the meetings were in-person, but we later hosted these online (via Microsoft Teams) due to the Covid19 pandemic, which enabled virtual participation. We used the research questions generated to inform future quality improvement work. We asked staff to complete a feedback survey to determine their views of the process.

Our journal club has generated hundreds of research questions. We have conducted quality improvement work and we have used these research questions to facilitate care improvements in our hospice. Our experience suggests that purposeful use of journal clubs can improve hospice outcomes. We believe our findings can be used to engage staff in other palliative care settings to improve care for those with serious illness.