The Palliative Care Program is deeply committed to educational opportunities for learners and colleagues from a variety of disciplines:
Ongoing professional education
Colleagues across the Penn Medicine health system and CHOP are invited and encouraged to attend our regular system-wide conferences, including Palliative Medicine Grand Rounds, Palliative Care Seminar Series, Palliative Care Case Conference Studies, and Palliative Medicine Journal Club. Our ongoing professional education is committed to diversity, and strives to have speakers, topics, cases, and scholarship that represent a diversity of disciplines, professional voices, and patient populations.
If you would like to be added to our list serve for ongoing professional education, please email Janet Long at Janet.Long@pennmedicine.upenn.edu. If you would like to suggest a speaker, topic, case, or article, please email Laura Dingfield at Laura.Dingfield@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.
Center to advance Palliative Care
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is a national organization dedicated to increasing the availability of quality, equitable health care for people living with serious illness. As the nation’s leading resource in its field, CAPC provides health care professionals and organizations with the training, tools, and technical assistance necessary to effectively meet this need. This completely free resource is available to anyone with a Penn Medicine email address and many courses offer free CMEs. Some CAPC modules that may be of interest:
- Communication Skills for Serious Illness Conversation: receive CAPC designation, indicating comprehensive training in communication skills
- Introduction to Palliative Care: provides clinicians from all specialties and professions with an introduction to palliative care, how it is delivered, its impact on quality of life, and the growing population of patients who need it.
To create your free account, visit https://www.capc.org/accounts/register
- Search for “Penn Medicine” in the organization list and select your entity.
- Follow the prompts to complete your user profile using your Penn Medicine email address.
Fast facts
Fast Facts and Concepts provide concise, practical, peer-reviewed, and evidence-based summaries on key palliative care topics important to clinicians and trainees caring for patients facing serious illness. These Fast Facts are provided by the Medical College of Wisconsin, as part of their mission to promote palliative care education to generalist clinicians.
Learn more about Fast Facts and Concepts.
ELNEC
The End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC) project is a national and international education initiative to improve palliative care.
For information about ELNEC at Penn Medicine, contact Beth Malane at Elizabeth.Malane@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.
For information about the organization ELNEC, click End-of-Life Nursing Education Consortium (ELNEC)
Social work on-line CE institute
Educating Social Workers in Palliative and End-of-Life Care (ESPEC) is a brand-new, innovative training program designed for health social workers by social workers to promote the integration of primary palliative care skills into clinical practice.
Visit to learn more about ESPEC
Serious Illness Care Program
The Palliative Care Program at Penn Medicine is a flagship partner of Ariadne Labs’ Serious Illness Care Program. The program is designed to foster “more, earlier, and better” conversations between clinicians and their patients about what’s most important in patients’ lives. The multi-component program combines evidence-based tools, interactive training and coaching, and integrated systems change to support these conversations.
With more than two-dozen trainers on staff, the Palliative Care Program has trained nearly1000 clinicians across Penn Medicine since late 2017. To date, those clinicians have had thousands of separate conversations with patients’ regarding their goals, values, and priorities – all documented in an easily located portion of the electronic medical record. Initial analysis of this program at Penn Medicine indicates that a documented serious illness conversation is associated with increased positive patient outcomes.
For more information on the Serious Illness Care Program visit Ariadne Labs.
The Palliative Care Program offers monthly Open Access sessions for SICP training. Information and registration can be found on Knowledge Link by searching HS.00001.PROGRAM.CONVOS. For additional training information, contact Barbara Carr, Education Coordinator.
For more information about SICP at Penn Medicine, contact Laura Dingfield, MD, Director of Palliative Care Education, Laura.Dingfield@pennmedicine.upenn.edu.
Watch Penn Medicine clinicians demonstrate the use of the Serious Illness Guide.
Set up the conversation
"I'd like to talk about what is ahead with your illness and do some thinking in advance about what is important to you so that I can make sure we provide you with the care you want — is this okay?"
Assess understanding of prognosis
"What is your understanding now of where you are with your illness?"
"How much information about what is likely to be ahead with your illness would you like from me?"
Share prognosis
"I want to share with you my understanding of where things are with your illness..."
Uncertain: "It can be difficult to predict what will happen with your illness. I hope you will continue to live well for a long time but I'm worried that you could get sick quickly, and I think it is important to prepare for that possibility."
Or
Time: "I wish we were not in this situation, but I am worried that time may be as short as… (express as a range, e.g. days to weeks, weeks to months, months to a year)."
Or
Function: "I hope that this is not the case, but I'm worried that this may be as strong as you will feel, and things are likely to get more difficult."
Explore key topics
"What are your most important goals if your health situation worsens?"
"What are your biggest fears and worries about the future with your health?"
"What gives you strength as you think about the future with your illness?"
"What abilities are so critical to your life that you can't imagine living without them?"
"If you become sicker, how much are you willing to go through for the possibility of gaining more time?"
"How much does your family know about your priorities and wishes?"
Close the conversations
"I've heard you say that ___ is really important to you. Keeping that in mind, and what we know about your illness, I recommend that we ___. This will help us make sure that your treatment plans reflect what's important to you."
"How does this plan seem to you?"
"I will do everything I can to help you through this."
Document your conversation
Use the dot phrase ".SICP."
Communicate with key clinicians
Share appropriate outcomes from your conversation.