Palliative Care Program
At UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Children’s Hospital, we offer outstanding, nationally recognized palliative care programs for our patients with life-threatening illnesses who are dying or facing an uncertain prognosis that bears the likelihood of death. Our palliative care services are comprehensive and interdisciplinary programs that offer pain management, symptom management, and address the psychological, social, emotional, spiritual and cultural concerns of the patient and family.
- UCSF Medical Center Adult Palliative Care Services
- UCSF Children’s Hospital Pediatric Palliative Care Services
- Overview article from UCSF News Office
UCSF Medical Center Adult Palliative Care Services
The Adult Palliative Care Service (PCS) is an interdisciplinary team that consists of attending physicians, nurses, a pharmacist, social worker, chaplains, residents and medical students. We recognize that dying patients have unique needs for respectful, responsive care, and our standard of care at the end of life addresses concerns regarding the patient’s comfort and dignity during the final stages of life.
Palliative care patients are housed in one of two Comfort Care Suites, which offer them a quiet, private, more home-like environment in which to spend time with their families and loved ones.
The UCSF Adult Palliative Care Service is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-supported Palliative Care Leadership Center (PCLC). As one of six national PCLCs, we host site visits for clinicians to learn how to establish palliative care units at their own hospitals.
In September 2004, Nurseweek Magazine wrote an article on palliative care that featured three UCSF nurses. The nurses shared stories from the bedside, and discussed the palliative care program at UCSF.
UCSF Children’s Hospital Pediatric Palliative Care Services
Any family who has a child with a life-threatening condition faces complex decisions and many demands on time, energy and resources. The pediatric palliative care (PPC) program at UCSF Children’s Hospital uses an integrative model to provide interdisciplinary care for all families with children facing life-limiting conditions, including perinatal and neonatal patients. The central components to our program are Education, Clinical Practice, and Research.
• Education
Our integrative practice model is based on the premise that all health care providers can and should develop the knowledge base, skills and attitudes that promote optimal PPC for their patient population.
Thus, hospital-wide education is central to our program. Our interdisciplinary palliative care educational activities occur routinely in a variety of venues, including nursing staff meetings.
• Clinical Practice
We are committed to continuously improving clinical practice and communication around patient care issues.
As such, many units have palliative care committees that meet regularly to spearhead new projects.
Examples of current projects include comfort care orders for pain and symptom management (for pediatric patients, neonates and non-viable fetuses), a policy for compassionate extubation, and an end of life checklist.
•Research
Our association with the UCSF School of Nursing offers us unparalleled access to the cutting edge research performed at one of the nation’s top health sciences universities.
Our research efforts are ongoing and span a variety of topics focused on program outcomes and quality improvement initiatives.
Our program name is COMPASS CARE . The four points on the compass represent our guiding principles: Care, Hope, Choice, and Resources.
CARE : Compass Care emphasizes physical, emotional, social and spiritual care with a focus on quality of life and relief of suffering. A central tenet of PPC philosophy is to affirm life helping children to live as well as they can for as long as they can.
HOPE : We recognize that maintaining hope is a powerful tool for coping with a medical crisis and an uncertain outcome. Here at UCSF Children’s Hospital, palliative care can occur side-by-side with treatments aimed at cure or at prolonging life. Some children have life-threatening conditions that can be cured or that, with treatment, allow many years of active life. When a cure is not possible, palliative care can become the primary goal of therapy. When that happens, we continue to provide treatments that offer comfort through the end of life.
RESOURCES : The Compass Care resource team includes doctors, nurses, social workers, child life specialists, spiritual care staff and pharmacists who have special training and experience. A goal of our program is to anticipate what resources might be helpful and to have them in place when they become necessary. We often organize interdisciplinary care conferences to facilitate communication and decision-making. We also connect families with other hospital resources, such as the Family Resource Room, library and special comfort care rooms. We have comfort care rooms in the pediatric unit as well as in the Center for Mothers and Newborns. Another room will open soon in the pediatric intensive care unit. Our Family Support Program includes chair massages, knitting classes and relaxation classes. With our knowledge of community resources, we can also help identify home care services, including hospice.
CHOICE : We are committed to providing honest information about available treatment options by exploring choices that will honor the personal, cultural and religious beliefs and practices of patients and their families. We recognize the central role of families in the care of patients and aim to support both families and staff as they navigate through difficult decisions together