Clinical Training

Our fellowship has three core sites: the Palo Alto VA, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (SCVMC), and Stanford Hospital. Fellows spend 10 weeks at each core site working with interdisciplinary teams as part of a consult team, or, in the case of the Palo Alto VA, the primary team. Their continuity clinics are also based at these sites. 

The Palo Alto VA Inpatient Palliative Care Unit is unique in that fellows lead the inpatient hospice team managing acute symptoms and medical needs of patients with serious illness approaching the end of their life. Fellows are responsible for all aspects of patient care (admissions, ongoing management, interaction with all other subspecialties, coordination of care with social work, nursing, psychology, and case management, discharge coordination, bereavement care and provision of family support) with the support of faculty. Fellows and alumni have emphasized how valuable this unique experience is to their fellowship training.

Fellows also spend 2-4 weeks on home hospice, 2 weeks with geriatric psychiatry at the Menlo VA, 2 weeks with pediatric palliative care at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital (LPCH), 2 weeks of outpatient palliative medicine at Stanford, and have at least 6 weeks of elective time where they can explore additional interests. 

We have been lucky to experience tremendous growth in our outpatient palliative care teams across our sites. In 2024-2025, our fellows spent 6 months in continuity clinic at the Palo Alto VA, and 6 months paired 1:1 with an outpatient faculty mentor at Stanford to pilot exposure to multiple continuity clinic sites and mentorship. Based on feedback from teams and fellows as well as increasing interest in outpatient palliative experiences, starting the 2025-2026 year, all fellow continuity clinics have 1:1 faculty to fellow precepting, with fellows spending half a year at Stanford and half the year at either the Palo Alto VA or SCVMC. This allows fellows to experience multiple practice styles and team structures while also allowing them to see patients across multiple settings within a health system. 

Elective options include but are not limited to acute and chronic pain, acute rehab spinal cord injury, addiction, ethics, geriatrics, geriatric-psychiatry, home based senior care, outpatient palliative at multiple sites, neuropalliative care, pediatric palliative care, palliative care consults at Kaiser Redwood city, psychiatry, and psycho-oncology.