Working Smarter Together: Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Outpatient Palliative Care

Outpatient palliative care clinics are growing in number, size, and scope of practice across many organizations. With this growth, some outpatient practices are facing challenges with staffing shortages and limited appointments, leading to overwhelmed staff and delays with patient scheduling. Relative to inpatient palliative care, models of interdisciplinary collaboration in outpatient palliative care is still a work in progress.

In this Master Clinician session, Stephanie Terauchi, MD, FAAHPM, and a panel of interdisciplinary clinicians will describe three different outpatient palliative care practice models. They will highlight unique roles that interdisciplinary team members—specifically a registered nurse coordinator, social worker, and clinical pharmacist—play in their clinics. The panel will share their experiences developing strategies to maximize team productivity by promoting the skill sets and strengths of different disciplines, while maintaining team cohesion. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to describe different models of interdisciplinary collaboration in outpatient palliative care and approaches for each team member to practice at the top of their licenses. They will also be able to discuss strategies to maximize collaboration in outpatient settings.