Stay Current on Palliative Care Skills and Emerging Trends

Program title: Palliative Care Series: Knowledge and Skills for Physicians, Residents, and Allied Healthcare Professionals
Length: 5 hours (delivered in five 1-hour installments)
Perfect for: Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals

Program description: This in-depth program focuses on the skills and emerging issues in practicing palliative care including:

• Stopping the revolving door: Breaking the cycle of hospital readmissions
• Reconciling palliative care, ethics, and Colorado law
• Derailing the “do everything” directive
• Ten common mistakes in using opiods
• Managing common and distressing symptoms in complex illness

We’ll tailor the Palliative Care Series to meet your exact educational needs. Topics may include:

General palliative and hospice care

• What is palliative care?
• The “good death”: Identifying patient values and goals
• The interdisciplinary palliative care team: Optimizing whole patient care
• Ethical and legal issues in end-of-life care
• Assessing decision-making capacity

Pain and symptom management

• Understanding and overcoming barriers to effective pain management
• Using opioids in patients with advanced illness
• Incorporating adjuvant medications for bone and neuropathic pain
• Patient-controlled analgesia: Pearls and pitfalls
• Managing common physical symptoms: Nausea, dyspnea, constipation
• Managing common psychological symptoms: Anxiety, depression, delirium

End-of-life communication

• How to deliver difficult news
• Talking with patients and families: How to introduce hospice care
• How to discuss DNR status with patients and families
• Determining and communicating prognosis: Pearls and pitfalls
• Exploring cross-cultural aspects of end-of-life care
• Advance care planning

Other core topics

• Last hours of life: Understanding the physiology of dying
• Artificial nutrition and hydration at the end-of-life
• Withdrawing life-sustaining therapies
• Negotiating “futile” care
• Palliative sedation: Pros and cons
• “Share The Care”: Supporting caregivers
• Caring for patients and families: Grief and bereavement
• When your patient dies: Caring for yourself
• Moral distress

Contact us to schedule a program for your group:
Call (303) 398-6326 or  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
(We will customize any program to meet your group’s needs.)