Palliative Care

While many might prefer to not think about dying, healthcare professionals throughout the United States are encouraging patients and their families to do just that during a national awareness campaign April 16-22 that promotes the importance of completing an advance directive for healthcare. Read More

Over the year, Congress has repeatedly attempted to “fix” healthcare by altering the funding streams between states and the federal government, as well as to commercial insurers. All of this might lead one to think that Congress is focused on the most important problems facing healthcare. Read More

Nashville photographer Fred Dusel took a long draw on his ever-present trademark cigar as he studied a richly detailed carbon transfer print of wind-twisted driftwood on a barrier island beach in Georgia. Read More

Past research has proven that palliative care — specialized medical care focused on pain and symptom management as well as psychosocial interventions to improve quality of life — benefits patients with malignant diseases such as aggressive cancers. Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) health care providers are now studying whether palliative care can also benefit those with advanced liver disease, a diagnosis that precedes either a life-saving liver transplant or death. Read More

Nashville musician and producer Jesse Boyce compares the anxiety he felt just before receiving palliative radiation therapy to the jitters he often experienced before going on stage. The instant treatment began — and as the first note rang out — his anxiety was replaced by a sense of peace and determination. Read More

Terrah Foster Akard is helping children facing serious and life-threatening illness create a digital record of their lives, and measuring the impact the practice has on their emotional wellbeing. Read More

After a successful 2016 pilot in the 16-bed Palliative Care Unit, the Vanderbilt Vigil Volunteers (V3) program — which pairs a volunteer with dying patients who either have no known family or friends, or whose family and friends are unable to be with them — is expanding into the Medical Intensive Care Unit (MICU) in early 2017. Read More

A new series of lunch and learn events at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is designed to teach nurses and other medical professionals best practices for providing palliative care to patients at their bedsides. Read More

As a nurse working with critically ill patients with orders to not resuscitate, Rebecca Hixson, R.N., has often lingered in a patient’s room to complete her routine charting if she felt they were nearing death and no family or friends were around. But Hixson now hopes a new volunteer program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) will mean these patients will always have someone by their side at the end of life. Read More

Learn about the difference between palliative and hospice care at a March 16 lunch and learn. Read More

Join Dr. Mohana Karlekar for an informative and interactive presentation on palliative care and advanced care planning on Thursday, Nov. 20, from noon to 1 p.m. in Light Hall, Room 437. Read More

When Mohana Karlekar, M.D., talks with patient families, she almost always asks what they know about palliative care, and the answer is almost always the same — “Not much.” Read More

Richard Payne, the Esther Colliflower director of the Duke University Institute on Care at the End of Life and professor of medicine and divinity at Duke Divinity School, will talk about “The Imperative of Palliative Care: Meeting the Triple Aim for Quality Care for the Seriously Ill” on Thursday, Sept. 6, at 3:30 p.m. Read More