Center to Advance Palliative Care

SGray-we are a 5 hospital system; The hospital culture dictates consultative practice; the team at each hospital consists of ARNP and MSW. The physician/Medical Director is available as needed. The interdisciplinary team (IDT)consists of ICU physician, pharmacist, nutritionist, case manager, resp therapist, Infect. Control Coordinator, and myself and MSW. Each nurse reports on his/her patients. The needs/goals of the patient/family are identified by the nurse and IDT. We are consulted for: compassionate weans, psychosocial support, family conferences, decision making support: i.e., code status, health care surrogate/living will, aggressive vs. palliative tx option, education re: disease progression, prognosis, etc. We rarely are consulted for pain/symptom mgmt in ICU. In a slow week, we average 5-6 consults in my ICU. We also made our team available on weekends for the ICU.