Background: In view of the Australian Senate enquiry into palliative care recommendations for evidence-based education in palliative care, we developed and piloted a neonatal program (Praecox Program) aiming to improve clinicians' knowledge and attitudes towards palliative care.

Method: A single-centre randomised, wait-list (n = 25) control (n = 15) study of neonatal clinicians. Changes in clinicians' knowledge and attitudes from pre to post-exposure to the education program were assessed by a Wilcoxon signed rank test and a paired-samples t-test for comparisons between the groups.

Results: Repeated measures revealed a statistically significant improvement in attitudes and knowledge following the program, z = _2.171, p < .03, with a medium effect size (r = .32). There was a statistically significant increase in attitudes and knowledge between the intervention group (SD = 4.82) and the wait-list group (SD = 3.96), p < .001 (two-tailed).

Conclusions: These data suggest that an evidence-based education program can improve knowledge and attitudes regarding neonatal palliative care. A further study will determine whether this has an impact on optimising clinicians' response and impact on parent psychological outcomes.