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Palliative Care Out-Patient Services

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Post Consults/outreach to nursing homes/MD offices
Author: Eva
Date: May 3, 2012 9:58 am
We are a nurse-led hospital-based palliative care program looking to increase collaboration with our local nursing facilities and physician practices. We envision reaching out to these entities to offer consultations to patients/families and also education for staff. At this point we are not thinking to include home visits or out-patient clinic.
Has anyone developed a program similar to this, and if so would you be willing to share specifics regarding the model you use, how it is staffed and funded, as well as what barriers you have encountered?
Thank you.
Replies: order by [Date] [Author] [Subject]
Re:Consults/outreach to nursing homes/MD offices (by sjcrump on 05/21/2012)
Dear Eva: It is common for hospital palliative care consult services to start with an experienced nurse liaison. These programs usually try to involve physician with specialty training if possible. This is often a difficult step but is a necessary step to be a palliative care service. As you know the standard for palliative care services is an interdisciplinary team that will include nursing and physician leadership. Having a nurse leader is a valuable asset. However, having clinical support in the form of a physician and potentially bid-level provider will be important for any service to grow beyond hospice education. Important in this consideration is a scope of practice issue. Nurses that are not practitioners can be wonderfully helpful at coordination and education but should be careful not to give medical advice on when to start or stop medical therapies with input from a physician or mid-level provider. This said, I do not know of services that have successfully done outreach without a physician. Formal PCLC training may help make the case for support and help strategically organize the service

Response on behalf of:
Ryan R. Nash MD, MA
Assistant Professor
UAB Center for Palliative and Supportive Care
Palliative Care Leadership CentersTM
UAB PCLC Director
Posted per Sandra Joyce Crump, Program Manager

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