Training & Curriculum

Fellows will spend about 19 weeks of their clinical time on the inpatient consult service. The remainder of their time will be spent between oncology, interventional pain, adult and pediatric community hospice, long-term care, electives and research. Continuity care clinic is offered in both palliative care and cancer rehabilitation and spans nine months of the year. Below you can find an example rotation diagram:

• Weekly Supportive Care Medicine lectures/journal clubs
• Bimonthly fellow didactic hour
• Bimonthly deceased patient reviews
• Monthly transdisciplinary reflection sessions
• Monthly bioethics sessions
• Annual goals, values, preferences, prognosis and plan (GVP3) project simulation/role-play sessions
• Monthly program director check-in
  

A dedicated interdisciplinary team of three palliative care specialty-trained social workers and an interfaith palliative care chaplain provide structured psychosocial and spiritual training. Social work and chaplain faculty are integrated into fellows’ inpatient rotations, and will actively participate in rounds, patient visits, family conferences and debriefing of patient/family encounters. This interdisciplinary team engages fellows in a didactic and interactive curriculum that focuses on themes such as grief, psychosocial assessment, cultural humility, bias, communication, responding to emotions, spiritual assessment, responding to spiritual distress, and religious aspects and approaches to death and dying. Fellows meet regularly with social work faculty, utilizing a tool called “process recording” to facilitate deeper understanding of their own countertransference, biases and emotions that impact clinical work. The chaplain and social work faculty also offer monthly reflection sessions to support the fellows' coping and resiliency.

Kasey Malotte, PharmD, Advanced Practice Pharmacist, is core faculty for the fellowship program. Fellowship pharmacy training by Malotte is primarily centered around teaching pharmacotherapeutic decision-making for each of the fellows. The educational approach is specifically tailored to each fellow’s educational needs and preferred learning style. Education typically includes scheduled interactive and dynamic didactic sessions including opioid therapy, non-opioid analgesics and non-pain symptom management topics. Malotte also provides regular experiential learning with each of the fellows serving as a transdisciplinary member of the Supportive Care Medicine team. An elective rotation with Malotte is also available for those who may be interested in further training in complex symptom management.

An elective rotation with Malotte is also available for those who may be interested in further training in complex symptom management.