How to Improve Palliative Care in the Emergency Department: Learnings from the EMPallA Study

Emergency departments (EDs) play a pivotal role in the care of older adults, particularly in the last month of life, when nearly half of this population has a visit. These encounters present an important opportunity to initiate palliative care interventions that can significantly improve outcomes for people with serious illness. However, the most effective methods for delivering these interventions remain unclear, leaving a critical gap in the evidence-base needed to inform best practices.

In this webinar, Rebecca Yamarik, MD, and Lyndsay DeGroot, PhD, will discuss ways to improve palliative care practices in the ED. Together, the presenters will review findings from the Emergency Medicine Palliative Care Access (EMPallA) study, which compares two distinct approaches to ED-initiated palliative care: nurse-led telephonic case management and specialty outpatient palliative care. By the end of the webinar, attendees will be able to determine the best approaches to ED-initiated palliative care, understand how to tailor the approaches to best meet patient and caregiver needs, and discuss the scalability and sustainability of different ED-initiated palliative care models.