Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

Our one-year fellowship is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and was established in 2013. Our principal training sites are MaineHealth Maine Medical Center (MHMMC), the Veterans Administration Hospital in Augusta, and Hospice of Southern Maine. The program presently enrolls 4 fellows per year. We consider applicants from all specialties eligible for Hospice & Palliative Medicine board certification.

Our fellowship program trains physicians to become specialists in providing expert interdisciplinary palliative care. We seek to develop physicians who will be leaders in the advancement of care for those with serious illness. Fellows learn from a balance of clinical experience, specialty communication training, focused didactics, and research opportunities.

Our program benefits from a faculty with diverse clinical backgrounds and three primary clinical settings that ensure exposure to a wide range of experiences along the full continuum of palliative and hospice care: 

• MHMMC, a tertiary academic medical center with robust inpatient adult and pediatric palliative medicine services as well as ambulatory experiences in adult and pediatric palliative medicine
• Togus VA Medical System, which includes an inpatient palliative and hospice medicine unit and long-term care facilities
• Hospice of Southern Maine, providing experience with a Medicare-certified home-hospice and inpatient hospice facility.

Fellows also spend time on subspecialty rotations aimed at broadening clinical skills such as: pediatric palliative care, home based palliative care, rural palliative medicine, geriatrics, oncology, addiction medicine, and caring for people experiencing homelessness.

Through these experiences, trainees develop expertise in the full continuum of care for patients with serious illness. Graduates are able to use their medical knowledge and communication skills to support patients and their families in receiving goal concordant care in an increasingly complex landscape. Our fellows graduate with the skills to:

1. Manage common and uncommon symptoms that arise for patients with serious illness from the time of diagnosis through end-of-life.
2. Communicate effectively with patients and families with a wide variety of illnesses, from all cultural backgrounds, and at the full range of illness severity/stage in a way that eases suffering and facilitates healthy coping.
3. Teach and coach other health professionals in their communication and primary palliative medicine skills.
4. Work collaboratively in inter-disciplinary teams to meet the needs of patients with serious illness.
5. Critically evaluate medical literature and lead quality improvement projects.

Learn more about our Palliative Care program. We are happy to speak with you further. Feel free to contact us!