In this introductory course, participants 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 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
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 lays the foundation for effective communication with patients, families, and colleagues. Clear and compassionate communication skills are essential when determining patient and family goals, preferences and choices during advanced illness, and developing a plan of care to support these preferences. A significant portion of this course is devoted to communication techniques including delivering serious news, facilitating family conferences, enhancing team communication, and participating in the shared decision-making process. Introductory content on moral principles and ethical decision-making are also explored.
In this introductory course, participants learn how to identify and address psychological, emotional, social, cultural and spiritual aspects of care in advanced illness, including grief and bereavement. Commonly used screening and assessment tools are reviewed. Roles of various professions in addressing psychosocial and spiritual needs are considered. Development of patient and family centered care plans are addressed, along with communication strategies and interventions, including referrals as needed. The importance of equity in palliative care is introduced.
Pain management is the most prevalent symptom in advanced illness. Participants 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 are examined. A case-based learning model is used in this course to master content, including demonstration of information literacy and quantitative fluency.
This course is designed to provide students with an evidence-based and experiential understanding of the benefits of self-care in the practice of health care. Hospice and palliative care professionals are at high risk for burnout. Participants in this course learn about common sources of stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue, as well as practical techniques for self-care. Participants will have opportunities to practice integrative self-care tools and to reflect upon their use. At the end of the course, participants will have developed a comprehensive, individualized self-care plan to achieve greater wellness and resilience to burnout.
Participants in this course will develop advanced skills used to manage special populations with advanced illness including pediatrics, geriatrics, palliative care emergencies, and advanced assessment cases; and will develop management skills to facilitate withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, and to manage the days before death.
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; and assuring appropriate staffing, operational aspects, financial management, human resources management, quality management, organizational integrity and compliance. Participants will become knowledgeable about the standards and regulations for hospice eligibility and compensation models
This course addresses the development of palliative care leadership skills including developing a supportive culture, establishing mission and values, promoting team building, promoting quality improvement initiatives, establishing service and performance excellence, assuring appropriate staffing and operational aspects, and developing financial management, human resources management, quality management, and organizational integrity and compliance. Participants will be intimately knowledgeable about the standards and regulations for palliative care practice and compensation models. Prerequisite: PALC 601
Participants in this course learn to assess the need for a hospice and/or palliative care program. Additionally, participants learn to develop, implement and maintain an ongoing, data-driven process that reflects the complexity of the organization, and one which focuses on clinical, economic and humanistic outcomes. Learners will assure strategic alignment of program operationalization with the established organizational mission and vision, with consideration for growth.
This course prepares participants to perform advanced assessment of patients with complex non-pain symptoms, to develop advanced skills to identify pathogenesis of the complaint, and to develop advanced non-pharmacologic and pharmacologic management of symptoms. Participants will develop advanced skills in managing these symptoms through the interdisciplinary team.
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).
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).
In this course, participants learn to perform an advanced assessment of a pain complaint (history, physical exam, diagnostics/imaging as necessary) and demonstrate advanced and in-depth knowledge of the pathogenesis of pain. Participants also acquire in-depth knowledge of evidence-based non-pharmacologic management of pain, and evidence-based advanced pharmacology (including drug therapy selection, dosing, monitoring, and titration), designed to meet patient-centric therapeutic goals.
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).
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.
Pediatric palliative care is a holistic approach aimed at addressing the complex issues related to the care of children and families facing chronic life limiting illnesses. The needs of children are unique and often quite different from those of adults receiving palliative care. In this, the first of four courses in a series, participants will learn to identify pediatric patients appropriate for palliative care and/or hospice care, including those with a life-threatening condition, conditions where early death is inevitable, progressive but chronic conditions without curative treatment options, and irreversible but non-progressive conditions with complex healthcare needs. For each of these situations, participants will learn about the presentation, diagnosis, prognosis, and management of common disease states, identify developmental issues that impact pediatric palliative care, and demonstrate age-appropriate comprehensive evaluation and assessment. Special attention will be devoted to the identification and care of perinatal/neonatal patients who would benefit from palliative care. The interdisciplinary approach to managing the needs of the pediatric patient, family and caregivers will be addressed, and best practices for the interprofessional pediatric palliative care team.
Management of pain and other physical symptoms is a critical part of palliative care. Participants in this, the second in a series of 4 courses, will learn how to perform a developmentally-appropriate assessment of pain and other physical symptoms. A multimodal approach to managing pain and other symptoms will be addressed, including pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic treatments. Special considerations will be given to the selection of opioids and other controlled substances, and risk mitigation strategies while using these medications. Participants will also learn how to monitor the patient’s response to the therapeutic intervention, and how to make adjustments that aim to control pain or reported symptom.
A critically important part of managing serious illness or the end of life is using appropriate communications skills with patients and their families, and anticipating and respecting grief and bereavement experienced by patients and their families. Participants in this, the third in a series of 4 courses, will learn how to provide developmentally-appropriate strategies to address grief, bereavement, depression, anticipatory grief, and variations in grief responses throughout and beyond the stages of a serious diagnosis. This will include providing interventions for healthcare professionals who are coping with death, anxiety and loss. Communication skills will include both verbal and written, and will cover developmentally and culturally appropriate strategies for empathetically and effectively communication serious news and addressing goals of care with patients and families. Developmentally appropriate cultural and spiritual assessment tools for assessing personal, cultural, and spiritual beliefs and practices that impact health care decision making will be covered.
An important part of pediatric palliative care extends beyond the clinical management of the patient and also includes the development and management of the practice and practitioners. Participants in this course will learn about the application of laws and principles of ethics in the provision of pediatric palliative care, as well as the role of research and quality improvement initiatives. The development and continued support of pediatric palliative care practitioners is critically important, and strategies for accomplishing both objectives will be addressed in this course. A practical component of pediatric palliative care is recognizing and contending with the financial and social aspects that impact practice and prospectively addressing transitions in care. Both topics will be addressed in this course, with liberal use of practical application practice.
Participants explore the history of 20th century health care and learn how a rejection of the prevailing paradigms of that era led to the hospice movement. The course traces the early growth of hospice care in the United States culminating in the Medicare Hospice Benefit. Students learn about the early concepts of palliative care and the movement to transform it into a subspecialty for physicians, nurses, social workers, chaplains, and pharmacists, as leadership with clear vision to motivate and inspire others and to build healthy work environments, has led to new models of palliative care. Finally, participants will explore the strengths and weaknesses of the current environment of hospice and palliative care, and - based on lessons learned during this evolution - will propose a more effective system of care for those near the end-of-life.
Qualitative and quantitative research in palliative care involves applying many statistical principles. This introductory-level statistics course will cover both descriptive and inferential statistics with applications to palliative care research. Students will be able to understand the hypothesis testing concepts used in the design and analysis of clinical trials. They will also be introduced to regression methodologies for continuous and categorical outcomes, which form the basis for palliative care research. The statistical software SPSS will be used to demonstrate the application of statistical aspects. Simulated and real data from experiments and clinical trials will be employed for practice and homework.
This course guides students in developing a draft systematic review to support their dissertation, focusing on palliative care research. Participants will learn to critically appraise literature, conduct comprehensive searches, and synthesize findings into a publishable summary. The course also strengthens skills in formulating research questions and contributing meaningful evidence to the field.
This course focuses on key principles of quantitative research design and measurement in palliative care, including how to define, operationalize, and evaluate variables. Participants will learn to assess measurement quality through reliability and validity, and apply various study designs and sampling methods while understanding their strengths and limitations. The course also addresses common sources of error, threats to validity, and ethical considerations, including issues related to health disparities.
This course emphasizes a constructivist approach to the generation of new knowledge in the field of palliative care. Qualitative approaches such as phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, focus groups, narrative research, and others are highlighted. The ontological and epistemological underpinnings of each method will be reviewed as well as pragmatic approaches to recruitment, data collection, data analysis, and interpretation of results in palliative care studies. Ethical considerations of qualitative research, particularly in relation to vulnerable populations, such as seriously-ill patients and families, are stressed.
Person-centered outcomes research seeks to integrate the perspective of patients, their care partners and family, and other stakeholders in the design and conduct of palliative care research. In this course, students will gain the knowledge and skills to design and conduct palliative care research that is meaningful and important to people experiencing serious illness. Emphasis will be placed on current recommendations for the best practices in person-centered outcomes research including the strengths and limitations of common study designs; unique study participant issues; the selection of relevant outcome measures; and implementation and dissemination.
Participants will be required to demonstrate advanced instructional design skills in the areas of analysis, course design, implementation and evaluation for a topic in the field of palliative care. Participants will be required to prepare and present a minimum of four course designs based on four discrete teaching methodologies. Each course will include advanced approaches for four different palliative care populations and content.
This course in Leading Change requires intellectual curiosity and commitment to learning theoretical foundations of leadership in palliative care. Palliative care leadership includes leadership in various domains: administration of new programs, initiatives related to serious illness, promotion of excellence and evidence-based practice, research to grow and mature the evidence, policy and advocacy in regulatory issues, health care delivery, and education. This class will examine leadership theory and principles, differences between management and leadership, followership, influence, and power. A case study-based approach will be used to examine leadership approaches in palliative care settings in the community and acute care settings. The goal of the course is to empower learners to strategically lead palliative care into the future.
This is pre-candidacy work that may include independent investigations consisting of library or laboratory research, seminars, or other assignments appropriate to the problem investigated. It is a DIDACTIC elective that may include self-study and gathering background information. The focus is learning a body of knowledge rather than building specific pharmacy practice skills, which may be a portion but not the entire focus of this experience.
This course is designed to provide guidance, support and mentoring to the PhD degree candidate throughout the dissertation process. Learners will make an original contribution to the scholarship of palliative care demonstrating the doctoral student's ability to research an important question in the field and capacity to present and interpret research findings in a clear and logical written form. Learners in this course will complete institutional requirements for engaging in academic research to include at minimum submission of a completed IRB application to the University Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects research (IRB). The dissertation is completed under the supervision of a faculty chair and is formally presented in an oral presentation to the dissertation committee. Dissertation credits are taken after the graduate student has been approved for admission to candidacy (approval from dissertation committee) for the doctoral degree in Palliative Care. A minimum of 12 credits are taken by students to complete the dissertation degree requirement.