Page Menu

Program Highlights

Overview
The UMass Palliative Medicine Fellowship is a one-year clinical program that equips fellows with the knowledge, skills and experience to provide comprehensive, interdisciplinary care for seriously ill patients and their families. We prepare fellows to become leaders and clinician educators, and support opportunities to train in quality science and research. The program is accredited by the ACGME and trains one fellow per year.

Rotations

Inpatient Consult Services (6 months):
- 5 months at UMass Memorial Medical Center - University campus: includes a Level 1 Trauma Center, Comprehensive Stroke Center, Heart and Vascular Center, Children’s Medical Center and multiple ICUs (medical, cardiac, surgical, pediatric and neuro-critical care). Co-located with the UMass Chan Medical School and Graduate School of Nursing.
- 1 month at UMass Memorial Medical Center - Memorial campus: a community hospital with a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and medical and surgical ICUs.
Ambulatory Palliative Care: ½ day week over 1 year
- Clinic is embedded in the Cancer Center, with close collaboration with medical, surgical, gynecologic and radiation oncologists. In addition to cancer care, fellows see patients with any serious illness to provide longitudinal palliative care.
- In addition, fellows continue to care for their patients if and when they enter hospice care.
Hospice (2 months)
- Inpatient care at the Rose Monahan Hospice House in Worcester
- Longitudinal care of dying patients and their families via home and nursing facility visits as well as weekly meetings with the hospice interdisciplinary team.
Pediatric Palliative Care (1 month)
- Inpatient care in a 30-bed Pediatric Intensive Care Unit and the Children’s Medical Center at University campus
- Community-based care with Notre Dame Health Care’s pediatric palliative care team (average daily census of ~150 children, the largest in Massachusetts).
- Fellows work closely with child life specialists, pediatric nutritionists, music therapists and other interdisciplinary team members.
Long-Term Care (1 month)
- At Beaumont Rehab and Skilled Nursing Center, fellows help address the palliative care needs of older adults and their families under the guidance of expert geriatricians. They become an integral member of the interdisciplinary team, including nurses, social workers, physical and occupational therapists, nutritionists and health aides.
Electives (1 month)
- Options include medical ethics; leadership and faculty development; quality science and Lean certification; population health; humanities in medicine; pastoral care; health psychology, and subspecialty clinical rotations (ALS Clinic, multidisciplinary cancer clinics, ECMO/VAD, among others).
Scholarly Activity (1 month)
- Fellows are expected to complete a quality improvement or research project with a mentor over the year. They can use this month to write manuscripts for publication, prepare grand rounds presentations, or finalize curricular proposals, among other activities.

Education and Professional Development

- Weekly Interdisciplinary Team Meeting (1.5 hours)
  - Case review, journal club, didactics, wellness sessions, narrative medicine
- Weekly meeting with fellowship program director
  - Debriefing, case review, mentoring
- Participation in simulation-based training in goals-of-care conversations for internal medicine and neurology residents and nephrology fellows (ten 3-hour sessions per year)
- Training in the UMass Memorial Serious Illness Care Program (with Ariadne Labs)
- Participation in pain management workshops for medical students, residents and oncology fellows (monthly)
- Participation in the Opioid Safe-Prescribing Training Immersion (OSTI)
- Schwartz Rounds (monthly)
- Participation on the Hospital Ethics Committee (monthly)
- Medicine Grand Rounds (weekly and hosted twice a year by palliative care)
- Family Medicine Grand Rounds (weekly and hosted annually by palliative care)
- Oncology Grand Rounds (weekly and hosted annually by palliative care)