Introduction
The University of Washington Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program utilizes comprehensive inpatient, outpatient, long term care, hospice, and community experiences in several facilities to support fellow education.
By rotating at multiple sites, fellows learn from diverse patient populations which enhances their experience and training and supports the fellows in learning to provide culturally responsive and trauma informed care. Fellows have the opportunity to work with and learn from transplant patients, immigrant and refugee patients, historically marginalized patients, patients from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, unhoused patients.
We have strong faculty and interprofessional team role models in research, education, and clinical care for our fellows, who will be the future leaders of palliative medicine. Previous fellows have a 100% HPM board pass rate.
There are 3 clinical training pathways:
- Adult Track
- Pediatric Track
- Geri-Pal Track (under development)
INTERDISCIPLINARY TEAM
Fellows work closely with interprofessional team members at all rotation sites. This enables fellows to broaden their depth and scope of palliative care in order to best support patients and families. It also offers fellows the opportunity to build skills as team members and as team leaders.
Fellows will work with interprofessional team members from many different disciplines including, but not limited to, social work, nursing, nursing aides, chaplaincy, pharmacy, occupational and physical therapy, bereavement support, music, writing and art therapy, child life and psychology.
WELLNESS
We recognize the emotionally intense nature of working in hospice and palliative medicine. In order to sustain longevity in the field, which is what we hope for all our fellows, it is important for fellows to identify and cultivate their own unique wellness skills. In order for fellows to have the bandwidth to focus on their own wellness, we feel it important that they have time. As such there is no required night or weekend call aside from 1-2 acting attending experiences at the end of the fellowship. We hope that fellows use their time to explore their interests, explore the PNW and participate in whatever brings them fulfillment.
Fellows also have facilitated monthly meetings to support reflection and a space for debriefing
TEACHING SKILLS
Fellows gain important teaching skills during the fellowship. During consultation and hospice visits, they gain experiential knowledge by seeing teaching skills modeled by hospice staff and faculty. These skills are expanded in more formal settings such as grand rounds, professional development seminars, team meetings and journal club.
By experiencing the talents of faculty and hospice team members during consultation and visits with patient and families, and by engaging in these activities as an active team member, fellows improve their skills through modeling and feedback from other team members. Formal feedback is also available in formal evaluation via MedHub.
GENERAL FELLOWSHIP CURRICULUM
Please see info provided for the individual training pathways for details
- 6-7 months of inpatient palliative care consultation service
- 2.5 months of home hospice
- 1-month long-term care/inpatient hospice
- 2 weeks Pain Service
- Outpatient Continuity
- Ethics Curriculum
- Elective/Scholarly Time
CONFERENCES
- Palliative Medicine Grand Rounds
- Fellow Didactic Conferences (More intensive during July and August to promote learning key palliative medicine concepts)
- Cambia Research Conference
- Journal Club
- Challenging Case Series
- Ethics Seminar
- Professional Development Series
- Vital Talk Training