Stephen R Mason

University of Liverpool | UoL · Marie Curie Palliative Care Institute Liverpool (MCPCIL)

Background Mentoring’s success in nurturing professional identity formation (PIF) has been attributed to its ability to build personalised and enduring mentoring relationships. However, beyond functioning as communities of practice (CoPs) supporting socialisation processes, how mentoring integrates programme values and instils a shared identity amo...

Background Mentoring can help shape how medical students think, feel, and act as physicians. Yet, the mechanism in which it influences this process of professional identity formation (PIF) remains poorly understood. Through the lens of the ecological systems theory, this study explores the interconnected and dynamic system of mentoring relationship...

Introduction The remote delivery of dementia-related support services by information communication technology, defined as any hardware or software, including the telephone and videoconferencing software, increased during the coronavirus pandemic. To guide the future use of information communication technology, this study explored the experiences of...

Background Effective mentorship is an important component of medical education with benefits to all stakeholders. In recent years, conceptualization of mentorship has gone beyond the traditional dyadic experienced mentor-novice mentee relationship to include group and peer mentoring. Existing theories of mentorship do not recognize mentoring’s pers...

Background Reviewing experiences and recognizing the impact of personal and professional views and emotions upon conduct shapes a physician’s professional and personal development, molding their professional identity formation (PIF). Poor appreciation on the role of reflection, shortages in trained tutors and inadequate ‘protected time’ for reflect...

Background A minority of European countries have compulsory training in palliative care within all medical schools. The aim of the study was to examine palliative care education in Estonia. Methods We used the adapted version of the Palliative Education Assessment Tool (PEAT) to evaluate palliative care education at the University of Tartu, the on...

Evolving individual, contextual, organizational, interactional and sociocultural factors have complicated efforts to shape the professional identity formation (PIF) of medical students or how they feel, act and think as professionals. However, an almost exclusive reliance on online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique opportunity t...

Background Medical education has enjoyed mixed fortunes nurturing professional identity formation (PIF), or how medical students think, feel and act as physicians. New data suggests that structured mentoring programs like the Palliative Medicine Initiative (PMI) may offer a means of developing PIF in a consistent manner. To better understand how a...

Background Mentoring plays a pivotal yet poorly understood role in shaping a physician’s professional identity formation (PIF) or how they see, feel and act as professionals. New theories posit that mentoring nurtures PIF by functioning as a community of practice through its structured approach and its support of a socialisation process made possib...

Objectives: This systematic review examined how information communication technologies (ICT) has been used to access remote post-diagnostic support that address the needs people with dementia, or those of dyad, and explored care recipients' views on accessing support remotely. Method: Concepts relating to dementia and ICT were searched across si...

Objectives Guiding the development of longitudinal competencies in communication, ethics and professionalism underlines the role of portfolios to capture and evaluate the multiple multisource appraisals and direct personalised support to clinicians. However, a common approach to these combined portfolios continues to elude medical practice. A syste...

Objective: To investigate whether fear of failure (FOF) influences a clinician's perception of how confident and comfortable they are in their delivery of end-of-life (EOL) care. Methods: Cross-sectional questionnaire study with recruitment of physicians and nurses across two large NHS hospital trusts in the UK and national UK professional netwo...

Background Only one systematic review has examined the emotions and psychological processes that clinicians experience, when providing end-of-life care to patients. The authors of this review highlighted how emotions of fear, and a sense of personal and professional failure may influence interactions between clinicians and patients. Very few empiri...

Introduction The need for longitudinal and comprehensive evidenced development of surgical knowledge, skills and attitudes, and the attainment of appropriate competencies have spotlighted portfolio use. Yet variations in structure, content and roles as well as its resource-heavy reputation have limited its impact. The purpose of this study is to ma...

Background: Communication skills training (CST) remains poorly represented and prioritised in medical schools despite its importance. A systematic scoping review (SSR) of CST is proposed to better appreciate current variability in their structure, content, and assessment. This is to guide their future design in medical school curricula. Methods:...

Purpose To report the experiences of End of Life (EoL) care in UK care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods UK care home staff and family carers of residents in care home took part in remote, semi-structured interviews from October to November 2020, with 20 participants followed-up in March 2021. Interviews were conducted via telephone or o...

Background A nurse’s role in caring for the dying is fraught with ethical, professional, and psychosocial challenges that impact how they perceive their roles as professionals. When unsupported, nurses caring for the dying experience burnout, career dissatisfaction and leave the profession. Better understanding of how caring for the dying affects t...

Introduction The redeployment of mentors and restrictions on in-person face-to-face mentoring meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic has compromised mentoring efforts in Palliative Medicine (PM). Seeking to address these gaps, we evaluate the notion of a combined novice, peer-, near-peer and e-mentoring (CNEP) and interprofessional team-based mentor...

Background Recognizing that physicians may struggle to achieve knowledge, skills, attitudes and or conduct at one or more stages during their training has highlighted the importance of the ‘deliberate practice of improving performance through practising beyond one’s comfort level under guidance’. However, variations in physician, program, contextua...

Objective To explore the emotional experience of physicians in acute settings when encountering end-of-life conversations and decision making. Method Thematic synthesis of qualitative studies. Medline, PsychInfo, PubMed, BNI and CIAHL were searched from 1985 to 2021 for studies published in English. Data extraction was informed by a framework crea...

Aims The aim of this study was to explore the impact of the pandemic on the emotional and mental well‐being of family carers, care home staff and residents, in light of changing restrictions, increased testing and vaccination rollout in the UK. Design Longitudinal, qualitative semi‐structured interview study. Methods Remote semi‐structured interv...

Objective To investigate whether fear of failure (FOF) influences a clinician’s perception of their confidence and comfortableness with the delivery of end of life (EOL) care, controlling for gender, role, years of experience, and number of EOL conversations. Design Cross-sectional questionnaire study. Setting Two large NHS hospital trusts in the U...

Background The pandemic has significantly affected care homes’ residents and families through the national visiting restrictions. However, less is known on the impact these changes have had on the care home workforce. The aim of this research was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the working practices of care home staff, caring for people living...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare landscape drastically. Stricken by sharp surges in morbidity and mortality with resource and manpower shortages confounding their efforts, the medical community has witnessed high rates of burnout and post-traumatic stress amongst themselves. Whilst the prevailing literature has offered gl...

Background vaccination uptake in the UK and increased care home testing are likely affecting care home visitation. With scant scientific evidence to date, the aim of this longitudinal qualitative study was to explore the impact of both (vaccination and testing) on the conduct and experiences of care home visits. Methods family carers of care home...

Little is known on how the pandemic has changed care home care delivery. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on care provision and visits in care homes from staff and family members’ perspectives. For this purpose, we conducted a telephone- and zoom-based qualitative semi-structured interview study. Care home staff and famil...

Background Volunteers make a huge contribution to the health and wellbeing of the population and can improve satisfaction with care especially in the hospice setting. However, palliative and end-of-life-care volunteer services in the hospital setting are relatively uncommon. The iLIVE Volunteer Study, one of eight work-packages within the iLIVE Pro...

Background: Nominal group technique (NGT) is a well-established research method for establishing consensus. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, research methods need to be adapted to engage with participants online. Objective: To determine the feasibility and acceptability of adapting NGT to an online format. Setting: Palliative care clinicians (n = 31...

It is evident, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic that has physicians confronting death and dying at unprecedented levels along with growing data suggesting that physicians who care for dying patients face complex emotional, psychological and behavioural effects, that there is a need for their better understanding and the implementation of suppor...

Background COVID-19 has caused the sudden closure of care homes to the outside world, to stem the virus from infecting some of the most vulnerable groups of people – older adults residing in care homes. With very little knowledge to date, we aimed to explore the impact of COVID-19 on care provision and visits in care homes from staff and family mem...

Introduction Ensuring medical students are equipped with essential knowledge and portable skills to face complex ethical issues underlines the need for ethics education in medical school. Yet such training remains variable amidst evolving contextual, sociocultural, legal and financial considerations that inform training across different healthcare...

The aim of this research was to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the working practices of care home staff, caring for people living with dementia. Remote qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with care home staff caring for people living with dementia (PLWD) in the UK. Participants were recruited to the larger programme of researc...

Background: Vaccination uptake in the UK and increased care home testing are likely affecting care home visitation. With scant scientific evidence to date, the aim of this longitudinal qualitative study was to explore the impact of both (vaccination and testing) on the conduct and experiences of care home visits. Methods: Family carers of care home...

Background: Empathy is pivotal to effective clinical care. Yet, the art of nurturing and assessing empathy in medical schools is rarely consistent and poorly studied. To inform future design of programs aimed at nurturing empathy in medical students and doctors, a review is proposed. Methods: This systematic scoping review (SSR) employs a novel ap...

Background The use of virtual reality (VR) is increasing in palliative care. However, despite increasing interest in VR, there is little evidence of how this technology can be implemented into practice. Aims This paper aims to: (1) explore the feasibility of implementing VR therapy, for patients and caregivers, in a hospital specialist inpatient p...

Background The re-introduction of medical students into healthcare systems struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic raises concerns as to whether they will be supported when confronted with death and dying patients in resource-limited settings and with reduced support from senior clinicians. Better understanding of how medical students respond to deat...

Background Supporting physicians in Intensive Care Units (ICU)s as they face dying patients at unprecedented levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic is critical. Amidst a dearth of such data and guided by evidence that nurses in ICUs experience personal, professional and existential issues in similar conditions, a systematic scoping review (SSR) is pro...

Introduction Including palliative care (PC) in overloaded medical curricula is a challenge, especially where there is a lack of PC specialists. We hypothesised that non-specialised rotations could provide meaningful PC learning when there are enough clinical experiences, with adequate feedback. Objective Observe the effects of including PC topics...

Background Effective Interprofessional Communication (IPC) between healthcare professionals enhances teamwork and improves patient care. Yet IPC training remains poorly structured in medical schools. To address this gap, a scoping review is proposed to study current IPC training approaches in medical schools. Methods Krishna’s Systematic Evidence...

Background Medical professionalism enhances doctor-patient relationships and advances patient-centric care. However, despite its pivotal role, the concept of medical professionalism remains diversely understood, taught and thus poorly assessed with Singapore lacking a linguistically sensitive, context specific and culturally appropriate assessment...

In undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, mentoring offers personalized training and plays a key role in continuing medical education and the professional development of healthcare professionals. However, poor structuring of the mentoring process has been attributed to failings of the host organization and, as such, we have conducted a s...

Background Growing concerns over ethical issues in mentoring in medicine and surgery have hindered efforts to reinitiate mentoring for Palliative Care (PC) physicians following the easing of COVID-19 restrictions. Ranging from the misappropriation of mentee’s work to bullying, ethical issues in mentoring are attributed to poor understanding and str...

Introduction: Evidence of novice mentoring's successes in having senior clinicians support junior doctors and/or medical students in their clinical, academic, and research goals has spurred efforts to include mentoring in the core medical curriculum. However, lack of effective structuring threatens the viability of mentoring programs, precipitatin...

Introduction Caring for terminally ill children influences nurses’ and allied health provider’s quality of life, ability to provide personalized, dignified and empathetic care and even their concepts of personhood. In the absence of data this review utilizes the Ring Theory of Personhood (RToP) to evaluate how a physician’s concept of personhood is...

Background: Mentoring provides mentees and mentors with holistic support and research opportunities. Yet, the quality of this support has been called into question amidst suggestions that mentoring is prone to bullying and professional lapses. These concerns jeopardise mentoring's role in medical schools and demand closer scrutiny. Methods: To b...

The World Health Organization recommends that "palliative care should be integrated as a routine element of all Undergraduate Medical Education." However, the provision of training for medical undergraduates is variable; only 18% of 51 European countries have mandatory training in palliative medicine. EDUPALL is an ERASMUS+ funded international col...

The need for longitudinal and holistic support of medical students throughout their training has led to the development of formal mentoring programs. Whilst success of formal mentoring programs has been attributed to (a) pairing mentees with trained and experienced mentors (matching), (b) the quality of mentoring interactions and (c) the presence o...

Background: Amidst expanding roles in education and policy making, questions have been raised about the ability of Clinical Ethics Committees (CEC) s to carry out effective ethics consultations (CECons). However recent reviews of CECs suggest that there is no uniformity to CECons and no effective means of assessing the quality of CECons. To addres...

Background As the global population ages, palliative care is ever more essential to provide care for patients with incurable chronic conditions. However, in many countries, doctors are not prepared to care for dying patients. Palliative care education should be an urgent concern for all medical schools all around the world, including Latin America...

Introduction An acute shortage of senior mentors saw the Palliative Medicine Initiative (PMI) combine its novice mentoring program with electronic and peer mentoring to overcome insufficient mentoring support of medical students and junior doctors by senior clinicians. A three-phased evaluation was carried out to evaluate mentees’ experiences withi...

Background Mentoring’s success in enhancing a mentee’s professional and personal development, and a host organisations’ reputation has been called into question, amidst a lack of effective tools to evaluate mentoring relationships and guide oversight of mentoring programs. A scoping review is proposed to map available literature on mentoring assess...

Mentoring’s role in medical education is threatened by the potential abuse of mentoring relationships. Particularly affected are mentoring relationships between senior clinicians and junior doctors which lie at the heart of mentoring. To better understand and address these concerns, a systematic scoping review into prevailing accounts of ethical is...

Mentoring is suffering from a shortage of trained mentors which compromise the efficacy of novice mentoring or mentoring between a senior clinician and a junior clinician. E-mentoring is proposed as a means of supplementing this dominant form of mentoring in medicine by providing accessible, timely and longitudinal support for mentees. However, wit...

Introduction: Professionalism is an evolving, socioculturally informed multidimensional construct that influences doctor-patient relationships, patient satisfaction and care outcomes. However, despite its clinical significance there is little consistency in how professionalism is nurtured amongst medical students. To address this gap a systemic sco...

BACKGROUND Interprofessional communication (IPC) improves patient care, cost efficiency and improves teamwork among healthcare professionals. For medical students IPC training is crucial to navigating complex healthcare practices yet there is little consistency to IPC training. This scoping review looks at IPC training approaches for medical studen...

BACKGROUND: Effective Interprofessional Communication (IPC) between healthcare professionals enhances teamwork and improves patient care. Yet IPC training remains poorly structured in medical schools. To address this gap, a scoping review is proposed to study current IPC training approaches in medical schools. METHODS: Krishna’s Systematic Evidence...

Background Mentoring is crucial to the growth and development of mentors, mentees, and host organisations. Yet, the process of mentoring in surgery is poorly understood and increasingly mired in ethical concerns that compromise the quality of mentorship and prevent mentors, mentees, and host organisations from maximising its full potential. A syste...

Background: Recent studies have gone to great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact all be part of the mentoring pr...

Background: Recent studies have gone to great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact all be part of the mentoring pr...

Background: Recent studies have gone to great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact all be part of the mentoring p...

Objectives: Training in Geriatric Oncology is in crisis, facing increasing demands in the face of a growing population of older adults, a lack of trainers, and the need to adapt training to different settings and trainee needs. A combination of novice mentoring and near-peer and peer mentoring (C-NP mentoring) has been proposed to provide trainees...

Introduction: Recent studies have gone to great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact be part of the mentoring proc...

Introduction: Mentoring studies have gone through great lengths to differentiate mentoring from teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision in efforts to better understand mentoring processes. This review seeks to evaluate the notion that teaching, tutoring, role modelling, coaching and supervision may in fact be part of the mentor...

Abstract Background With increased demand for palliative care (PC), the World Health Organisation (WHO) have called for PC teaching to be made routine. However, medical students report feeling unprepared in dealing with end-of-life care. Necessary benchmarking of the preparedness of clinicians to provide PC is required to identify where current tra...

Background Mentoring nurtures a mentee’s personal and professional development. Yet conflation of mentoring approaches and a failure to contend with mentoring’s nature makes it difficult to study mentoring processes and relationships. This study aims to understand of mentee experiences in the Palliative Medicine Initiative (PMI). The PMI uses a con...

Background Mentoring’s success has been attributed to individualised matching, holistic mentoring relationships (MRs) and personalised mentoring environments (MEs). Whilst there is growing data on matching and MRs, a dearth of ME data has hindered development of mentoring programme. Inspired by studies likening MEs to learning environments (LEs) an...

Background Recognising dying is difficult and is an ongoing difficulty for doctors. We believe there is a process to dying and animal studies support this theory. We previously demonstrated that a number of volatile organic compounds in urine, change in the last weeks and days of life of patients in a small mixed cancer group. We needed to verify t...

Effective mentoring enhances the personal and professional development of mentees and mentors, boosts the reputation of host organizations and improves patient outcomes. Much of this success hinges upon the mentor’s ability to nurture personalized mentoring relationships and mentoring environments, provide effective feedback and render timely, resp...

Background A continuous subcutaneous infusion (CSCI) is an effective method of multiple drug administration commonly encountered in end of life care when the oral route is compromised. At present, current practice is to limit syringe driver infusion time to a maximum of 24 hours as dictated by available chemical stability data. However, the ability...

Background The Neuberger review made a number of recommendations to improve end of life care, including research into the biology of dying. An important aspect of the biology of dying is the identification of biomarkers as indices of disease processes. Biomarkers have the potential to inform the current, limited understanding of the dying process a...

Background: Biomarkers have the potential to inform the current, limited understanding of the dying process and assist clinicians in recognising dying, in particular how to distinguish dying from reversible acute deterioration. Objectives: To critically appraise the literature on biological factors that may be used as prognostic indicators in advan...

Background: Biomarkers have the potential to inform the current, limited understanding of the dying process and assist clinicians in recognising dying, in particular how to distinguish dying from reversible acute deterioration. Objectives: To critically appraise the literature on biological factors that may be used as prognostic indicators in advan...