What Every Physician Assistant Needs to Know About Palliative Care

Physician assistants (PAs) provide life-saving diagnostic and therapeutic care, often in primary care settings, leading patient-centered medical teams or in close association with other members of a patient’s healthcare team. As more and more patients seeking care are presenting with serious or chronic illness, every physician assistant needs to be equipped with a basic set of tools for assisting patients and families through these stressors. Generalist or basic palliative care skills can…and should…be integrated into every physician assistant’s practice.

Palliative care is specialized care, an extra level of support, for people with serious or chronic illnesses and their families. Appropriate from point of diagnosis onward, it focuses on relieving the symptoms and stress of a serious illness, going hand-in-hand with curative treatment and improving quality of life for both the patient and their family.

Modules in the What Every series are approximately one hour in length and provide a discipline-specific introduction to palliative care. These courses are designed to create an awareness of palliative care principles and establish a common understanding across the organization.

What You’ll Learn

The course walks you through a comprehensive overview of palliative care including:

• Knowledge of Palliative Care
• The Palliative Care Team
• Delivery of Care
• Settings of Care
• Communication
• Increasing timely access to quality palliative care

What You’ll Earn

• Differentiate among “usual” care, palliative care and hospice care
• Identify the role of each member of the palliative care team and the benefits of interdisciplinary care
• Describe unique elements of the palliative care delivery process
• Recognize the value of palliative care in specific care settings
• Conduct an advance care planning conversation
• Assess and identify patients who would benefit from palliative care

CME Credits

The Doctors Company designates this live activity for a maximum of 1 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) through the joint providership of The Doctors Company and California State University Shiley Institute for Palliative Care. The Doctors Company is accredited by the ACCME to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Get the Brochure!

Despite the growing recognition of the value of palliative care, the majority of healthcare practitioners have insufficient training to provide a basic level of palliative care to their patients. With our aging population and a shortage of expert palliative care practitioners, there will never be enough specialists to provide all the palliative care needed. This is why basic palliative care skills should incorporated into every PA’s “toolkit” and every PA student’s knowledge base.

What Every Physician Assistant Needs to Know about Palliative Care is a one-hour, fully online course that provides a comprehensive overview of palliative care principles, models of care and skills. This self-paced course provides physician assistants with guidance on how to deliver bad news, conduct an advance care planning discussion, and assess the need for a referral to expert-level palliative care, and more.

Whether your organization has a dedicated palliative care team, contracts with another organization to offer palliative care, or you are considering either starting a palliative care program or integrating the principles of palliative care into your practice, this course provides an educational foundation. What Every Physician Assistant Needs to Know about Palliative Care will help you understand the benefits of palliative care, how it is different from usual care and hospice, and assess the need for expert-level palliative care.

What Every Physician Assistant Needs to Know about Palliative Care includes case scenarios, multi-media content, extensive resources and multiple tools to enrich the online learning experience. This course is one of a series of courses designed to teach the entire organization about palliative care. Learn more about the What Every… Needs to Know About Palliative Care series and maximize your investment in palliative care.

Course Authors

• Nadya E. Dimitrov PAC, DPM
• Karl Steinberg, MD, CMD
• Kathy Brandt, MS
• Carol Lovci, RN, MSN
• Monique Parrish, DrPH, MPH, LCSW
• Sue Wintz, MDiv, BCC

Completion and Refunds

In order to complete this course and obtain a certificate, you must view the course in its entirety, correctly answer all case studies and quiz/test questions (as appropriate) and complete the evaluation. You will have 90 days to access this course from the date of purchase. No refunds are given for self-paced courses.