A Taste of Palliative Care

Catalog description

Palliative care focuses on helping patients and their families achieve the best quality of life, regardless of the length of life. Attention to suffering, excellent symptom management, and compassionate communication skills are paramount. This 1 week (Monday-Friday), 1-credit selective provides students the opportunity to observe and work alongside various palliative care practitioners in community, inpatient, outpatient and hospice settings. The importance of multi-disciplinary teamwork will be emphasized. Concepts to be explored include common fears and challenges that terminally ill people face, biopsychosocial models of care, palliative care symptom management, the family interface, grief, and bereavement. You will arrive at your assigned site at 8:30AM on the first day; a personalized schedule with further details will be sent to you by email prior to the first day. Attendance/Absence Policy: This is a 5-day rotation and students are required to be present with the team a minimum of 4 days (90% of the course) in order to make the most of the rotation and to ensure that our clinicians are able to appropriately assess and grade the learning experience. If students need to miss more than 1 day of the rotation, they will need to drop the course at least 10 days prior to the start date to allow time for other learners to have an opportunity to enroll. All absences must be approved by the course director (Dr. Neha Kayastha) before the start of your rotation. Any absence without prior notification of the course director is considered unexcused unless documentation of inability to make those contacts is provided. Any absence not approved by the course director for a required part of a course is considered unexcused. An unexcused absence will have a negative impact on the student's grade or evaluation and may result in a Code of Professional Conduct charge if deemed…