Essential Palliative Care Principles Every Health Professional Needs to Know

Monday, December 16, 2024, 12:00 AM - Tuesday, December 15, 2026, 12:00 AM

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. The Center for Advance Palliative Care describes palliative care as seeing beyond the disease and providing a fundamental shift in the delivery of healthcare. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of the illness. The goal is to improve the quality of life for both the patient and the family.

Palliative care is provided by a specially-trained team of doctors, nurses, and other specialists who work together with a patient’s other doctors to provide an extra layer of support. Palliative care is based on the needs of the patient, not on the patient’s prognosis. It is appropriate at any age and at any stage of a serious illness, and it can be provided along with curative treatment. Palliative Care improves quality of life and lowers symptom burden in patients whose needs are most complex given their serious illness. Palliative experts devote time to counseling and providing clear and in-depth communication to ensure care received matches the goals, values, and priorities of the patient and family and assist in coordination with other care teams across health care settings. Complex physical and emotional symptoms are addressed and managed. These can include pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue, shortness of breath, constipation, nausea, loss of appetite, and difficulty sleeping. Evidence of the benefits will be reviewed to demonstrate that palliative care significantly improves patient quality of life and lowers symptom burden.  Involvement of Palliative Care professionals not only improves the quality of care but also lowers costs; studies consistently show improvements in both quality measures and resource utilization once palliative care is introduced.
With the aging population and advances in treatments leading to extended life, more people are living with serious illnesses but trained palliative care experts are limited. For this reason, enhancing and developing primary palliative skills are of utmost importance. Primary palliative skills are those that all physicians/clinicians should have, and they will be discussed in this course. 

Syllabus and instructor information

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AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™ (2.00 hours), Non-Physician Attendance Certificate (2.00 hours)

1. Recognize essential aspects of Palliative Care
2. Identify when to refer to expert Palliative Care clinicians
3. Recognize strategies and tools to assist patients with serious illnesses in decision-making

The University of Florida College of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Credit Designation

The University of Florida College of Medicine designates this Enduring Material for a maximum of 2.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

For CME general questions, please contact
Email: [email protected]

Mitigation of Relevant Financial Relationships

Presented by:
Sheri Kittelson, MD
Professor and Chief of Division of
Palliative Medicine  
University of Florida Palliative Care Program in the Department of Medicine

Neal Weisbrod, MD
Assistant Professor Department
of Neurology
University of Florida College of Medicine

Disclosure:
Drs. Sheri Kittelson and Neal Weisbrod has disclosed that they have no relevant financial disclosures. No one else in a position to control content has any financial relationships to disclose.

University of Florida College of Medicine adheres to the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. All individuals in a position to control a CME activity's content, including faculty, planners, reviewers, and/or others, must disclose all financial relationships with ineligible companies (commercial interests). Conflict of interest information for the CME Advisory Committee members can be found on the following website: https://cme.ufl.edu/disclosure. All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated.