Page 22 - Delaware Medical Journal - April 2017
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Education in Palliative Care:
A First Step to Building a Program
Allison Gonzalez, DSW, MSW, LCSW
Palliative care is a vital service for patients, caregivers, and family members. The mission of palliative
care is to improve the quality of life for
a patient suffering from life-limiting illness. Palliative care is interdisciplinary, leveraging the expertise of physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, nurses, chaplains, and others to address the physical, emotional, psychosocial, and spiritual needs of the patient. “Palliative care sees the person beyond the disease.
It represents a paradigm shift in health care delivery.”1
Nationally, palliative care has gained momentum, as more health care systems create palliative care programs. There
is abundant data demonstrating that palliative care positively impacts length of stay, hospital mortality rates, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAPHS) scores, readmission rates, ED usage, as well as increased referrals to hospice and home care services.2
As Delaware’s population ages, it is important that all health care providers have a baseline understanding of how to address the complex needs of the growing numbers of seriously ill patients. The national census reported that between 2000 and 2010, the number of Delawareans aged 65 and over grew by 27.1 percent, the 11th-fastest growth rate in the country. Drilling down on those numbers, the national census found that during that time period Delawareans aged 85
and older grew by 49.2 percent. Similar to the growing shortage of geriatricians, there are not enough palliative care experts to touch every patient with palliative care needs.3
To address this gap, many institutions, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., Sta-Home Health in Jackson, Miss., Rainbow Hospice and Palliative Care in Mt. Prospect, Ill, as well as Trinity Health (parent of Saint Francis Healthcare) recognize the need for mid-career training and are training health care workers in the basic principles and practices of palliative care.4 At Saint Francis Healthcare, we have made palliative care education across disciplines a main priority. This article
steps in a successful palliative care education plan.
STEP 1: DEFINE YOUR OVERALL EDUCATION GOAL(S) AND UNDERSTAND YOUR RESOURCES
As you begin to think about educating
disciplines such as nursing or medicine, oncology or geriatrics? Or are you looking to broadly educate across all clinical departments? At Saint Francis, our aim was to change the culture of palliative care throughout the Saint
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Del Med J | April 2017 | Vol. 89 | No. 4
