An introductory course, participants will learn about the patient/family-centric model of palliative care, the interdisciplinary team concept, models of care in hospice and palliative care and regulatory aspects of these practice models. Participants will also learn about education and self-care for practitioners, operational aspects of hospice and palliative care, the application of analytic inquiry and evidence-based discovery, and implications for community outreach.
Course Descriptions
A key element of this course is determining patient and family goals, preferences and choices during advanced illness, and developing a plan of care to support these decisions. A significant portion of this course will also be devoted to communication techniques including delivering bad news, counseling techniques and introductory content on ethical decision-making.
Pain management is the most prevalent symptom in advanced illness. Participants will learn how to perform a uni- and multi-dimensional pain assessment, and the assessment of the most common non-pain symptoms associated with advanced illness. Management strategies including non-pharmacologic and pharmacologic will be examined. A case-based learning model will be used in this course to master content, including demonstration of information literacy and quantitative fluency.
This course is entirely case-based, and uses the interprofessional/interdisciplinary approach to the resolution of complex cases of patients with advanced illnesses. Participants will have to rely on team members to achieve optimal patient outcomes. (Majority of coursework must be completed).
This course prepares participants to perform advanced assessment of patients with complex non-pain symptoms, developing advanced skills to identify pathogenesis of the complaint, and advanced non-pharmacologic and pharmacologic management of symptoms. Participants will develop advanced skills in managing these symptoms through the interdisciplinary team. (Pre-requisite: PALC 605 – Symptom Management in Advanced Illness).
Using a disease-based approach, participants will perform advanced assessment of common advanced illness disease states (e.g., COPD, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, heart disease, etc.), sophisticated identification of pathogenesis and disease progression, selection of beneficial evidence-based treatments, and skills to discontinue medically futile treatments as disease progresses. (Pre-requisite: PALC 605 – Symptom Management in Advanced Illness).
Participants in this course will develop advanced skills used to manage special populations with advanced illness including pediatrics, geriatrics, palliative care emergencies, advanced assessment and management skills to facilitate withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, and manage the days before death. (Pre-requisite: PALC 605 – Symptom Management in Advanced Illness).
This course addresses the development of hospice leadership skills including developing a supportive culture, mission and values, promoting team building, quality improvement initiatives, service and performance excellence, assuring appropriate staffing, operational aspects, financial management, human resources management, quality management, organizational integrity and compliance. Participants will be intimately knowledgeable about the standards and regulations for hospice eligibility and compensation models. (Pre-requisite: PALC 601 – Principles and Practice of Hospice and Palliative Care).
This course addresses the development of palliative care leadership skills including developing a supportive culture, mission and values, promoting team building, quality improvement initiatives, service and performance excellence, assuring appropriate staffing, operational aspects, financial management, human resources management, quality management, organizational integrity and compliance. Participants will be intimately knowledgeable about the standards and regulations for palliative care practice and compensation models. (Pre-requisite: PALC 601 – Principles and Practice of Hospice and Palliative Care).
Participants in this course will learn to assess the need for a hospice and/or palliative care program, and develop, implement and maintain an ongoing data driven process that reflects the complexity of the organization and focuses on clinical, economic and humanistic outcomes. Learners will assure strategic alignment of program operationalization with established organizational mission and vision with consideration for growth. (Pre-requisite: PALC 601 – Principles and Practice of Hospice and Palliative Care).
This course provides participants with a solid grounding in the principles of adult learning, how to assess knowledge and learning differences, principles of instructional design, and barriers to teaching and learning. Participants will be prepared to perform an audience analysis, prepare and deliver learning materials to patients, families, caregivers, other health care providers, and other stakeholders.
This course provides participants with advanced skills and information necessary to elicit patient and/or family values and delineate goals of care regarding pain and symptom management, advanced life-sustaining therapies, and advanced communication techniques for delivering bad news, establishing goals of care, suspending therapies, and death notification. (Pre-requisite: PALC 603 - Communication and Health Care Decision Making)
Participants will develop advanced skills in the assessing patients and families to determine psychosocial needs, spiritual and cultural concerns, and address patient and family suffering, coping and healing within the emotional, psychological and social domains with focused developmentally appropriate assessment followed by targeted communication, interventions and referrals. (Pre-requisite: PALC 604 - Psychosocial, Cultural, and Spiritual Care).
Hospice and palliative care professionals are at high risk for burnout. Participants in this course will learn about common sources of stress in this field, what self-care is, and why healthcare professionals should practice self-care. Participants will learn several techniques to practice daily self-care.
The purpose of this course is to facilitate learners in developing skills to identify, evaluate, and apply palliative care literature per the principles of evidence-based practice. The course will introduce research design and statistical methods to allow students to accurately and effectively interpret study findings. Research designs discussed will include descriptive studies, randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, clinical practice guidelines, qualitative research, and quality improvement. Learners will be able to appraise literature and apply the evidence to a patient care situation or population of interest.