A Thank You to The Palliative Care Education Community

To the CAPC Community:

On January 15, 2015, CAPC launched an online palliative care curriculum. Our goal was two-fold – to support thousands of teams across the country to launch and grow high-quality palliative care programs, and to train all clinicians in the core palliative care clinical skills so badly needed by our sickest and most vulnerable patients. We now have 37 courses (10 on operational and leadership topics and 27 on clinical knowledge and skills). Since then, we’ve worked with so many of you and your organizations to promote culture and practice change through training.

I am delighted to announce that as of this month more than 50,000 courses have been completed by over 8,500 individual clinicians.

I thank every one of you who have completed training, have encouraged colleagues to do the same and who have advocated for the inclusion of palliative care skills in standard training requirements at your organizations. It is because of you that countless patients will receive higher-quality care and will avoid unnecessary suffering.

To relieve suffering for the more than 46 million Americans living with serious illness.

To ensure that all patients with serious illness have access to pain and symptom management, skilled conversations about their care preferences and what to expect and coordinated, responsive care – and that their loved ones receive the support that is necessary to be caregivers.

To scale palliative care services beyond hospitals and hospices and into community settings where the need is greatest and largely unmet.

To remove the major barrier to receipt of palliative care beyond hospital walls: lack of training for America’s health professionals.

To provide a training alternative for those clinicians who recognize their patients’ needs and are unable to secure time or resources for additional graduate or certificate programs or for live training workshops.

• 50 U.S. states
• 4 Canadian provinces
• 468 organizations
• 75 specialties and subspecialties
• All clinical disciplines
• Hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, nursing homes, group practices, clinics, ACOs and payer organizations

75% of those who have taken CAPC courses come from specialties other than palliative care. What this means is that an enormous – and growing – number of clinicians from all settings and specialties are united in the mission to improve care quality through acquiring core palliative care knowledge and skills.

If you have not yet taken a course, I urge you to try. A course catalog with operational and leadership training for the palliative care team and clinical training for all clinicians can be downloaded here and course demonstrations are available here. All courses provide CME and CEU (for nurses, social workers, physicians, physician assistants, care managers and licensed professional counselors), are free for all staff from member organizations and can be taken from your phone, tablet or laptop.

To sign up as a new user, create an account here. If you would like help spreading the word about training to your colleagues, visit the Member Information Center on CAPC Central or call into office hours to strategize with our team.

Many colleagues also offer superb training resources both for palliative care specialists and for all clinicians. A table summarizing many of them is below.

This is an incredibly exciting time to be part of health care. I have seen more rapid change in the last five years than in all of my previous career – and that change is accelerating. Your vision and commitment is the platform from which we will revolutionize health care.

Note: There are many great programs and resources available for palliative care training for the non-specialist. See below for a partial list of training options.