Hospice and Palliative Care Pediatrics Fellowship

Pediatric Track in Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship

The pediatric track in the Hospice and Palliative Medicine fellowship at UT Health San Antonio combines robust pediatric experiences with the adult-focused fellowship activities. The pediatric training emphasizes pediatric complex care with a focus on children with medical fragility.

UT Health San Antonio has a well-developed three-pronged pediatric palliative program including fully integrated outpatient, inpatient, and hospice services

• The outpatient complex care program has a dual purpose: primary care for pediatric patients with medical fragility as well as outpatient palliative care. Fellows will have longitudinal pediatric clinic experiences and learn to develop care plans that address condition-specific, primary care needs in the context of the whole family and quality of life.
• Fellows will split their inpatient clinical time between the pediatric and adult palliative services. Fellows will graduate with the ability to competently address the needs of an aging medically complex pediatric population. Pediatric fellows will have the opportunity to master the adult competencies addressed on the hospice and palliative medicine board exam.
• Graduating fellows will be able to comfortably practice both adult and pediatric palliative care, which is often delivered by one physician at smaller hospice agencies and rural community hospitals.
• The pediatric program also includes a rapidly growing Perinatal Palliative program which follows mothers from the time of diagnosis of severe anomalies with their baby through the pregnancy and delivery. If the infant is born alive the Perinatal Palliative care team will follow through the hospitalization and if discharged either on the hospice or clinic service.
• Fellows will also rotate with a community hospice agency, working with an interdisciplinary team to develop skills to care for both pediatric and adult hospice patients.

Palliative medicine is an interdisciplinary field and the hospice and palliative fellowship at UT Health San Antonio is an interdisciplinary training program. Fellows will train alongside other non-physician fellows from other disciplines including social work, psychology, chaplaincy, pharmacy,  and nursing. Fellows from the various disciplines actively work together on cases and learn to practice with an interdisciplinary approach.

Research
The program is research-oriented. Each fellow will be paired with a faculty mentor and will be expected to develop at least one scholarly project and submit an abstract to the Annual Assembly of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and other applicable conferences. The curriculum includes 4 weeks of dedicated research time, which includes a 2-week formal research-training course in the fall. Ongoing research is conducted throughout the fellowship and additional elective research rotations are available. All fellows also participate in a quality improvement project.

Contact
For more information or questions regarding the pediatric track of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship please contact Dr. Hema Navaneethan (Pediatric Palliative Fellowship Director) at navaneethan@uthscsa.edu or Dr. Jennifer Barker (program director) HealyJ@uthscsa.edu