Center to Advance Palliative Care

Candid communication with patients and families about changed or changing relationships between providers and sites of care is central to good palliative care and is a core component of professional consultation etiquette.

In most circumstances, the patient's primary physician - or in the case of some hospitals, the hospitalist - will call for a palliative care or hospice consultation. We would expect both the referring clinician and the pallilative care and/or hospice consultant to speak with the patient and family about; 1) who is making the consultation request and 2) why that request is being made. Furthur, we would expect that the consultant would communicate her/his findings/recommendations to the referring clinician and would docoument those findings/recommendations in the medical record.

Should the palliative care consultant be invited to assume responsibility for management of some aspect of the patient's on-going care, that invitation and the specific scope of responsibility of the palliative care provider would also be clarified and discussed with the patient and family.

Amber Jones
CAPC Consultant