Advance care planning clinic: A structured clinical experience for internal medicine residents.

BACKGROUND: Advance care planning (ACP) is an important step to provide medical care consistent with patients' preferences and values. Nationally, rates of ACP completion are low, and internal medicine residency clinics face additional barriers. To address this need, we implemented an ACP clinic for internal medicine residents. METHODS: An ACP clinical experience was created for PGY2 residents beginning in 2018, with 6 total sessions, consisting of consolidated didactics, protected time to identify, outreach, and schedule patients, and two half days of dedicated ACP visits. Residents were surveyed before (end of PGY1) and after (end of PGY2) the intervention. The preceding residency class, serving as a historic control, only received the curriculum and were surveyed at the end of their PGY2 year. Electronic medical record (EMR) data was accessed to track ACP documentation. RESULTS: The overall survey response rate was 124/134 (93%). Comparing the intervention cohort before and after the intervention, there was a significant increase in self-assessed confidence in completing ACP (2.1/4.0 vs 3.5/4.0, p < 0.01). Comparing the intervention and historic cohorts (end of PGY2), the intervention was associated with improved confidence in ability to complete ACP for their patients (3.5/4.0 vs 2.7/4.0, p < 0.01). The historic control had no increase in ACP documentation rates over time, while the intervention cohort had a 13.9% absolute increase in ACP documentation for their patients over the course of residency (p < 0.01). CONCLUSION: The creation of an ACP-specific clinical experience, in conjunction with existing curricula, resulted in significant improvements in knowledge, self-assessed skills and behavior, and EMR documentation.

Creating a Colocation Unit for End-of-Life Care during a Pandemic.

Background: Palliative care seeks to support the physical, psycho-social and spiritual needs of patients and families who are facing life threatening diseases. Advantages of establishing a palliative care unit, or alternatively co-locating patients, include promoting optimal physical and psychological symptom management; increased family satisfaction; and facilitating resource allocation. Objective: To design a stand-alone hospital unit to provide end of life care during a pandemic. Setting: Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH), a 1,144 bed tertiary- and quaternary-care teaching facility and Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt Sinai. Method: Tracking key indicators signaling the need for conversion to a COVID-19 unit, and identifying factors to facilitate a successful conversion. Result/Implementation: Using previously identified key focused action categories as framework, we describe our successful palliative care unit (PCU) conversion into a COVID-19 care unit. Conclusion: We believe that these operational insights gained from transforming our unit during COVID-19 will be helpful to other programs and institutions during a pandemic, or public health emergencies.