Curriculum - Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

You will join the inpatient palliative care team at the University of Vermont Medical Center, a tertiary care and Level I Trauma Center. During this rotation, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with teams across the hospital to assist in the care of adult and pediatric patients with serious illness.

The McClure Miller Respite House is Vermont’s largest free-standing hospice center. During this rotation, you will hone your skills in symptom management and end-of-life care. Fellows will have the opportunity to collaborate with a team of nurses, chaplains, social workers and volunteers to provide high-quality care and bereavement services.

This rotation will give you the chance to hone your skills in the clinical and regulatory skills of home hospice through the University of Vermont Health Network Home Health & Hospice, a Medicare-certified hospice program. Fellows will participate in weekly interdisciplinary conferences and conduct home visits with members of the hospice team.

During your fellowship, you will also spend time at Porter Medical Center, a 25-bed critical access hospital in Middlebury, Vermont. Fellows will continue to gain skills in palliative care consultation and inpatient hospice during their time at Porter. You will also round at Helen Porter Nursing Home, a 105-bed nursing home where you will be able to provide specialty palliative care to patients in both sub-acute rehabilitation and long-term care.

Patients in rural settings often have limited access to palliative care and hospice services. We have designed this rotation to allow you to not only experience rural hospice and palliative care, but also to understand how to best support patients who are further away from major medical centers. Through a partnership with AHEC, fellows will stay in a rural community and work with a rural palliative care team including a physician, experiencing a variety of clinical settings (e.g. home, skilled nursing facilities, critical access hospitals). Fellows will also partake in a rural narrative medicine project to better understand the needs of rural patients. Currently our fellows rotate for 2 weeks in the Northeast Kingdom and Southwest regions of Vermont.

The University of Vermont Children’s Hospital provides specialized pediatric care for children and their caregivers throughout Vermont and Northern New York. You will have a dedicated 2-week block to see pediatric patients with serious illness in the general inpatient ward, pediatric intensive care unit, neonatal intensive care unit, and the outpatient setting. Fellow will have the opportunity to work alongside our pediatric palliative care specialists as well as nurses, social workers, and child life specialists. If you would like more pediatric time, you can add a pediatric elective to explore pediatric specialties such as heme oncology, intensive care, pulmonology, neurology, or emergency medicine.

You will have the opportunity to choose from a variety of electives, including acute and interventional pain, radiation oncology, integrative pain, ethics consultation and addiction medicine. You may also have the opportunity to build your own elective.