Literature Review

Fostering a team-based approach to elevate neuro-oncology care CancerNetwork; by Sylvia Kurz, MD, PhD; 6/9/25 Sylvia Kurz, MD, PhD, spoke with CancerNetwork® about the importance of collaborating with multiple disciplines to elevate the level of care and meet the needs of patients with brain tumors.

Nurse Elaine Gillard and her lifelong calling for caring New York Amsterdam News; by Leyrian Colón Santiago; 6/5/25 Treating patients with dignity and with an awareness of the disparities that Black people face in accessing health care were the two main reasons Elaine Gillard decided to become a nurse 14 years ago. ... According to a 2024 analysis, Black-American New Yorkers experienced the lowest health system performance in the state compared to white individuals. For Gillard, a 41-year-old native of Staten Island and a nurse at VNS Health Care, the disparities affecting the Black-American population were what inspired her to focus her nursing career on hospice care. ... Gillard believes that being a Black nurse and caring for patients from Black-American communities helps foster greater trust in the health care system.

Cleveland Clinic virtual care service expands throughout US Becker's Health IT; by Giles Bruce; 6/4/25 The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, a virtual second opinion service, is expanding its licensure to thousands of additional providers across the nation. The Clinic partnered with credentialing company Baton Health to grow its provider licenses to more than 10,000, spanning the entire country. The Clinic, a joint venture between Cleveland Clinic and telehealth company Amwell, offers quick access to physicians and subspecialists for virtual second opinions. 

Hawai'i Pacific University alumni join forces to build a pioneering palliative care team for student excellence Special to The 'Ohana - HPU's Daily News, Honolulu, HI; 6/3/25 A group of HPU alumni from the nursing, social work, public health and business administration programs ... will be working towards steering a newly established palliative care team at HPU to assist nursing students, social workers and public health students to play an important role in understanding palliative care, hospice and communication with family and survivors. The team will play a role in setting up clinical placements in the community at St. Francis Palliative Care Units and Hospice, to give our nursing students invaluable hands-on experience in providing compassionate care for patients with serious and life-limiting illnesses. HPU Assistant Professor Joy Bliss, Ph.D., will also be designing simulations for “effective listening and communication skills,” to enhance student’s performance and skills in grief and this specialty of nursing. ... This initiative is not only an opportunity to strengthen the clinical training of nursing students, but also an essential step forward in improving the availability and quality of palliative care in Hawaiʻi. 

AMA advocacy: Graduate Medical Education and student loans American Medical Association; 6/3/25 The American Medical Association is committed to supporting medical students and residents as they attend school and enter their training years. As part of this the AMA believes that the cost of a medical education should never pose a barrier to a career in medicine and has long-standing concerns about the high and increasing costs of medical education and supports efforts to ensure that individuals are offered fair loan terms and are provided with the ability to make meaningful progress towards paying off their student loans. In alignment with this, the AMA collaborates with our partners in the Federation of Medicine, and engages in consistent and ongoing advocacy work in the public- and private-, to ease the financial burden medical students, residents and physicians by: ...

The importance of humanity in internal medicine I.M. Matters from the American College of Physicians; President's Message by Jason M. Goldman, MD, MACP; June 2025I recently attended the funeral of one of my long-time patients, who had required hospice care after a long battle with heart disease. Many of us have had the experience of telling a patient and their family that their disease has progressed and we have reached the limits of medical science. In training, we are taught to be compassionate but professional, maintaining a certain level of emotional detachment ... As internal medicine specialists, we have the awesome responsibility and privilege to be the doctor for our patients through decades of their life experiences and to offer them not just medical science, but also humanity and comfort. ... One of the greatest acts of charity a person can perform is to attend someone's funeral, as it is the only act of kindness that cannot be reciprocated. This patient had been in my practice for almost two decades, and I had the privilege of taking care of both her and her husband.Editor's note: Re-read this powerful statement, "One of the greatest acts of charity a person can perform is to attend someone's funeral, as it is the only act of kindness that cannot be reciprocated." 

MLN Fact Sheet: Creating an efffective Hospice Plan of CareCenters for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Medicare Learning Network (MLN); 5/10/25 The hospice plan of care (POC) maps out needs and services given to a Medicare patient facing a terminal illness, as well as the patient’s family or caregiver. CMS data shows that some hospice POCs are incomplete or not followed correctly. This fact sheet educates on creating and coordinating successful hospice POCs. The primary goal of hospice care is to meet the holistic needs of an individual and their caregiver and family when curative care is no longer an option. To support this goal:

Colorado end-of-life care residency requirement challenged Bloomberg Law; by Ryan Autullo; 5/22/25 A terminally ill Minnesota man is asking a federal court to let doctors in Colorado administer drugs to him so he can die peacefully there, a challenge to the state’s residency requirement in accessing end-of-life care. Prohibiting Colorado doctors from giving non-residents drugs to ease suffering in their final months is unconstitutional, lawyers for Jeff McComas wrote in a complaint filed Thursday in the US District Court for the District of Colorado.

When patients die: A myeloma specialist grieves Medscape; by Manni Mohyuddin, MD; 5/28/25 ... We form such beautiful bonds with patients as we guide them through the highs and lows of treatment. And that is why I struggled so profoundly with the abrupt separation created by a transition of a patient to hospice. How can it be okay for me to be seeing a patient weekly (and sometimes more often) for such a long time and then suddenly never see them again after they transition to hospice? How can we just disappear from their lives at such a critical juncture? I understand that I may not have more chemotherapy to offer, but I at least can offer emotional support, validation, and my friendship. ...Editor's note: Continue reading this powerful commentary. Taking this further, do you have HIPAA compliant systems in place to notify the patient's oncologist or pre-hospice primary physician of the death? 

Primary mental health competencies for hospice and palliative medicine physicians: A Delphi studyJournal of Pain and Symptom Management; by Lisa Podgurski, Danielle Chammas, Keri O Brenner, Leah B Rosenberg, Neha G Goyal, Maria I Lapid, Sue E Morris, William F Pirl, Bridget Sumser, Benjamin W Thompson, Lindsey Wright, and Daniel Shalev; 5/20/25  Objectives: To establish and prioritize 'primary mental health competencies' for specialist hospice and palliative medicine physicians using expert consensus methods. Results: The expert panel proposed 68 competencies divided into: (A) psychological foundations of serious illness care, (B) diagnosis and management of mental health disorders in serious illness, and (C) systems-based practice. After first-round voting, 23 competencies were recirculated for a second vote. Following second-round voting, 32 competencies were included in the final list: 7 from part A, 20 from part B, and 5 from part C.

"You're next": People are sharing the last words they heard someone say as they were dying, and they're not all inspiring BuzzFeed; by Mike Spohr; 5/21/25There's so much we don't understand about the end of life. Recently, we shared a post where Quora users shared their experiences being present for the final moments of someone's life...and hearing their last words. Well, as it turns out, BuzzFeed's readers wanted to share their experiences hearing someone's last words too, so we rounded them up here:

UAB resident leaders complete Chief Residents Leadership Development Workshop UAB Medicine - The University of Alabama at Birmingham; by Katherine Gaither; 5/19/25 Fourteen UAB chief residents recently completed the Chief Residents Leadership Development Workshop. The program, presented by the UAB Medicine Leadership Development Office, was held on May 9, 2025. The Chief Residents Leadership Development Workshop is focused on helping chief residents from core residency programs build their leadership competencies. The sessions include small-group breakout sessions that provide chief residents with the tools, skills, and learning opportunities to enhance their understanding of interpersonal communication and group dynamics, which are critical to success and satisfaction as clinical leaders.

‘Marathon’ effort to refine end-of-life wound coding runs on McKnights Long-Term Care News; by Kimberly Marselas; 5/28/25 Two key wound care groups are finalizing a proposal for new codes that would help skilled nursing providers avoid newly created diagnoses gaps for end-of-life skin breakdown that could lead to missed reimbursement and potential liability risks. The push comes a year and a half after nursing homes won the right to stop coding wounds that occur as part of dying as pressure injuries, which can hurt their quality ratings. But they also lost any way to code or acknowledge treatment of such skin failure in the Minimum Data Set. ...