Fourth year standing. Restricted to SSOM students.

Offered for all periods - Needing pre-approval from Dr. Schwartz-Peterson based on her availability. 

When applying for the elective, the student should provide a one paragraph narrative regarding what additional objectives they would like to gain out of their experience. 

Hospice and Palliative Medicine is a growing medical specialty, which focuses on symptom management for those facing serious/life threatening conditions. While medical training traditionally focuses on the disease, palliative medicine focuses on the patient and their family living in the context of their disease with the goal of reducing or eliminating distressing symptoms associated with their condition with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of their lives.

Although the modern Hospice/Palliative Medicine movement has been in existence for half a century, the specialty has been officially recognized in 2006 by the ACGME with the accreditations of post-residency fellowship training programs and by the ABMS who has been offering a sub-specialty certificate of added qualification (CAQ) in this specialty since 2008. Despite this, much of the medical community has had limited exposure to this field leading to many misconceptions regarding this specialty.

Objectives:
1. Understand the difference between Palliative Medicine and Hospice and how to determine who would be an appropriate referral for each.
2. Understanding the difference between Primary Palliative Medicine and Specialty-Level Palliative Medicine.
3. Understanding the four dimensions of suffering
4. Being able to communicate “bad news” and facilitate goal oriented decision making
5. Understanding Advanced Directives and gaining confidence in assisting patients/families on completing these documentations.
6. Managing pain
7. Managing other distressing symptoms (dyspnea, nausea, anxiety, agitation)
8. Recognizing normal signs seen during the dying process

Most of the adult experience will take place in Barrington at JourneyCare’s Inpatient Center (IPC) with the opportunity to see patients in their homes, nursing homes, or hospital setting. Besides the physician preceptor, the student will spend time with the other members of the Hospice interdisciplinary team including nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers and chaplains. They will also be exposed to at least one Hospice Inter-disciplinary team (IDT) meeting allowing for a better understanding of how this model provides continued support and management of the Hospice patient.