Pediatric Track Fellow Experience

Fellow Experience

Fellows will split their inpatient clinical time between the pediatric and adult palliative services. 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. Fellows will develop the ability to competently address the needs of an aging medically complex pediatric population.

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. They will be responsible for managing their own panel of patients.

Fellows will also rotate with the 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 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

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.