Palliative Care Education: Focusing on Care and Not Just Disease

At The Institute for Palliative Medicine (IPM) in San Diego, residents are training for one of the most essential aspects of medicine: caring for seriously ill patients. "The goal is to teach them the core competencies in palliative care," explained Dr. Charles von Gunten, the Institute's provost. "These competencies include pain management, effective communication skills, and the ability to provide patients with psychosocial and spiritual assessments and to work in interdisciplinary teams in hospitals, as well as with hospices and in nursing homes."

The Institute was formed in 1989, when national data showed that patients rated doctors poorly in communications skills and end-of-life care. The need for palliative care, as part of comprehensive medical care, has generally been overlooked in the problem-oriented approach that dominates the practice of medicine, he explained, one in which doctors make a list of patients' problems and try to solve each of them. For full article, click here.

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