Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fontana Medical Center - Curriculum

Goals and Objectives

The Kaiser Permanente Fontana Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship provides broad clinical training experiences for our fellows to experience the full spectrum of what early, integrated palliative care services can provide for patients with serious illness.

Weekly didactics are held with our core palliative medicine faculty, geriatric medicine faculty, and in coordination with our partner Hospice and Palliative Medicine programs at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. We want to set our fellows up for success in their careers by providing opportunities for mock interviews, quality improvement initiatives, scholarship rounds, and leadership rounds where they can learn from established HPM leaders within Kaiser Permanente.

Didactics

• Core Palliative Medicine Lecture Series
• Supportive Oncology Lecture Series
• Scholar Rounds
• Journal Clubs
• Serious Illness Communication Workshops (Regional)

Fellows will rotate at the Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center and nearby Ontario Medical Center for their inpatient palliative medicine experiences. Fellows will spend at least three months at both sites, supervised by our core hospice and palliative medicine faculty. We have the unique ability to follow patients seen on the inpatient consult service longitudinally after discharge in the outpatient palliative clinic, home-based palliative care program, and/or on home hospice services due to our position within the Kaiser Permanente integrated health system. To provide this continuity, our fellows will spend alternating weeks on inpatient palliative consultations, and the subsequent week on the home-based palliative care and home hospice services. This provides increased opportunities for fellows to follow inpatients discharged to a home palliative or home hospice service and thus appreciate the nuances and gratification of truly being a key part of a patient’s care. Inpatient calls are taken one weekend per month (Saturday-Sunday, attending co-rounds 9am-1pm with remainder of call taken at home until 11pm). Fellows will also spend a continuity day every Thursday morning in the outpatient palliative clinic, where early palliative care establishment and rapid symptom intervention is taught.

We are proud to partner with other institutions to provide comprehensive palliative care experiences for our fellows. Fellows will spend a month at the City of Hope National Cancer Center in Duarte, CA for one month of cancer pain management, where they will learn advanced skills with palliative symptom management. In exchange, fellows from City of Hope then also come to Kaiser Permanente to learn more about palliative care in different care settings. Fellows will also spend a month with VITAS Healthcare in Santa Ana, CA for general inpatient hospice unit experience. Elective opportunities include internal rotations (e.g. Bioethics, Pulmonology, ICU), and global health palliative care rotation sites.