Curriculum

Hospice and Palliative Fellows experience a broad range of educational opportunities in several formats including:

Fellowship Orientation:

For the first two weeks of fellowship, all fellows are together for a series of high-yield sessions including an introduction to pain management with adjuvants and opioid calculation cases, introduction to buprenorphine, the transition to being a consultant, medicine and spirituality, delirium, sustainable practice, care of people who are dying, community facing education, sharing hard news and family meetings, VR end of life cases with the geriatrics program, an introduction to quality improvement, nausea vomiting and bowel obstructions, respiratory symptoms, as well as orientation to their clinical sites and EPIC training. There are also a number of community building events across the Geriatrics and Palliative fellowship programs. Clinical rotations start the Monday after orientation concludes.

Palliative Core Didactics Small Group Sessions:

Every Tuesday afternoon following orientation, the fellows have didactics on key Palliative Care topics and other aspects of serious illness care. Teaching occurs in a small group format taught by faculty across Palliative Care, Ethics, Geriatrics, Neurology, Hematology & Oncology, Radiation Oncology, Pediatrics, Psychology, Psychiatry, and more. Some of the longitudinal curricular threads throughout the year include addiction, pain management, career development, medical teaching, quality improvement (with a goal of submitting a group abstract to AAHPM at the end of the year) palliative psychiatry, and sustainable practice. 

Community-facing Education Workshops:

In partnership with our Stanford Serious Illness Community Partnerships Team, our fellows have opportunities to co-facilitate sessions on advance care planning and introducing palliative care to community members and patients. These free virtual sessions happen quarterly and give fellows a chance to practice teaching about our specialty and how to start advance care planning in a way that helps build skills for being an ambassador for HPM beyond fellowship. For more information, see: https://med.stanford.edu/palliative-care/events/upcoming-events.html 

Communication Skills Workshops:

Fellows participate in skills-based sessions with simulated patients and faculty facilitators throughout the year to get targeted feedback on their communication skills, practice delivering prognosis, responding to emotion, and how to shift conversations as situations evolve. All faculty facilitators have undergone VitalTalk facilitator training and support fellows in practicing new skills in both the simulation or clinical environments. Fellows also receive training in the Serious Illness Care Program during their orientation. 

Sustainable Practice Series:

Our sustainable practice series is co-led by our interdisciplinary team members in social work and spiritual care, to provide a confidential space for fellows to debrief, learn about trauma informed care, process their own life transitions, and to cultivate skills to practice hospice and palliative medicine in a sustainable way over their careers.  

Interprofessional Palliative Care Journal Club:

Each month, fellows gather with teams across our core sites to review and discuss recent articles and topics relevant to Palliative care. Recent topics have included stigmatizing language in medical records, disparities in palliative care and hospice access and advance care planning completion rates, time limited trials, supporting surrogate decision makers, shared decision making in family meetings for critically ill neurologic patients, opportunities for improvement when people with intellectual disability or serious mental illness also need palliative care, telehealth vs. in person early palliative care, triggers for palliative care consults, cultural preferences in end of life care, prognostication in neurologic disease, medical aid in dying over the years, and many more.

Palliative Care Grand Rounds and Educational Series: 

Once a month speaker series for fellows and teams across all sites to explore topics and issues relevant to Palliative Care. Topics over the last few years have included: community partnership, views on hospice and palliative policy from the leading edge, neurosurgical approaches to treating cancer pain, best practices in education, palliative care in the ED, understanding breast cancer: disease trajectory, treatment and symptom management, trauma informed care, sleep and chronic illness aging, engaging stakeholders to improve advance care planning and dementia care, bridging gaps and disparities with neurosurgeons and palliative care physicians as partners, lessons learned about teaching palliative care virtually, the significance of belief in miracles for patients with serious illness, caring for aging parents, the need for improved palliative care awareness and knowledge in patients and caregivers, communication on health outcomes in older LGBTQ adults, Islamic perspectives in end of life care, loneliness and social isolation among older adults, palliative care as the accidental activist: approaches to substance use in people with serious illness, goal concordance in surgical decision making, exploring grief through astrophysics storytelling, and many more. 

Neuropalliative Care Fellowship Focus

We plan to offer an optional fellowship focus in neuropalliative care, starting in the 2026-2027 academic year. The goal is to mentor and support trainees with a specific interest in providing specialist palliative care for people and families living with serious neurological illnesses. Neuropalliative Fellows will attend a weekly neuropalliative continuity clinic for half the year, receive mentorship from subspecialist faculty, have tailored didactics throughout the year, and can pursue neuropalliative electives and projects, in addition to their broad-based palliative care training. Neuropalliative experiences will be offered at both Stanford Hospital and the VA Palo Alto.

PalliPsych Collaboration with UCSF

Our programs both have faculty with expertise in palliative medicine and psychiatry, and we collaborate for shared lecture content throughout the year as well as a full day in person workshop on the Stanford campus in the winter with virtual follow up sessions for fellows across both programs.