Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship
Contact usThe Aurora Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship aims to ensure our trainees are equipped to competently and consistently:
- Provide comprehensive assessment and management of patients' suffering and quality of life, across all areas of care.
- Care for a diverse range of chronically ill patients across the life cycle.
- Adhere to the highest level of medical ethics while dealing with stressful situations and grieving families.
- Develop expertise in pain and symptom management of patients with serious, potentially life-threatening medical illnesses.
- Embrace a culture of patient- and family-centered care.
- Facilitate discharge planning for patients with complex needs and assist families with decision-making regarding long-term care.
- Lead and facilitate discussions with patients and their families regarding goals of care, advanced care planning and withdrawal of life-sustaining therapy.
- Provide counseling to families and caregivers throughout the dying process and during bereavement.
- Collaborate with an interdisciplinary team, including physicians in other sub-specialties, APNPs and RNs, physical therapists, chaplains and others.
Fellows in our 12-month program will see a high volume and variety of patients, ensuring a diverse and comprehensive clinical experience. In addition to ample impatient exposure at two of our metro campuses, our fellows will complete services alongside specialists in home hospice, inpatient hospice, long-term care and inpatient or ambulatory pediatric palliative care.
Our fellows are also allotted one half-day a week for research/scholarly activity and one month to pursue an elective of interest. Aside from their elective and pediatric service, our fellows come together every Tuesday for continuity clinic.
Yearly rotations schedule
Our one-year program accepts two new fellows each year.
Rotations include Inpatient, Home Hospice, Inpatient Hospice, Research and Geriatrics.
(One block equals 4 weeks)
13 blocks of 4 weeks each
St. Luke’s Medical Center: 4 blocks
Sinai Medical Center: 2 blocks
Zilber inpatient hospice: 3.5 blocks
Home hospice: 1 block
Children’s hospital: 0.5 block
Geriatrics: 1 block
Electives: 1 block
Research Opportunities
Fellows must complete a quality improvement project during their fellowship year and are assigned mentor(s) that help walk them through the process of root cause analysis and the Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle to complete their project.
Didactics
Regular didactics include:
- Noon conference – once a week
- Interdisciplinary team meetings (inpatient hospice service) – once a week
- Virtual wellness huddle – monthly
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP) – First meeting is arranged for fellow and additional meetings can be arranged if needed
- Ethics committee (inpatient and inpatient hospice services) – case-by-case pending
- Safety Huddle (inpatient services) – daily during hospice rotation
Additional educational activities include:
- Resiliency and self-care retreat – Three half-days per academic year.
- Boot camp – First two weeks of the academic year. Fellows will be provided with the foundational basis of core Hospice and Palliative Medicine topics. Fellows will also be introduced to a variety of potential research topics and will be given these two weeks to start exploring their research topic(s) of interest with the assistance of research-based faculty.
- Pallitalk a communications skills workshop – 3 days hosted by UW Madison
- Acute Care for Elderly (ACE) Conference – 1 day virtual event
Our fellows receive a generous budget to attend regional and national conferences. Fellows are expected to attend at least one national conference (Center to Advance Palliative Care Conference and/or American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine).
Practice sites
Our fellows have the opportunity to train at numerous inpatient, long-term care, palliative care and inpatient hospice locations.
Salary & benefits
The Aurora Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship offers a competitive salary, comprehensive health coverage for you and your eligible dependents and many other perks.
View salary & benefits [PDF]
Apply to the fellowship
We appreciate that you are considering our fellowship program and look forward to receiving your application materials. If you have any questions about the application process after reading the information below, please contact the fellowship’s program coordinator, Jonathan Friday.