Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship – Northeast
Train to provide compassionate care to patients and their families.
About us
Our 1-year Hospice and Palliative Medicine (HPM) Fellowship – Northeast will train you to care for patients living with serious or terminal chronic illnesses in northeastern Pennsylvania. This program will teach you to manage patients’ symptoms and deliver serious illness communication in community settings.
Our fellowship focuses on community practice and care for complex medical conditions. We teach management and anticipation of complex symptoms in chronic and end-of-life illness. Our program familiarizes fellows with advanced life support therapies commonly encountered in practice across both academic and community settings. Fellows complete their pediatrics experience at St. Joseph’s Center and their Trinity Child Care Center. There, care is provided for medically complex children and supports their transition into adulthood. Inpatient consult service is completed at Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, where the palliative service also manages inpatient hospice. In addition to inpatient hospice at Geisinger Community Medical Center, our fellow rotates at Allied Services Hospice, a community hospice agency. There are ample opportunities to complete electives in specialties ranging from addiction medicine to interventional pain at our Scranton and Geisinger Wyoming Valley campuses.
Fellows complete the program ready to confidently counsel patients and families while helping them manage their expectations. Graduates are board-eligible in Hospice & Palliative Medicine.
Message from the program director
Welcome to northeast Pennsylvania! Nestled in the northern part of the Pocono Mountains, our campuses provide easy access to urban activities — Philadelphia and New York City (2 hours by car) and Washington D.C. (4 hours by car) — and outdoor activities, such as hiking, biking, camping and fishing. Much like our specialty, our fellowship prioritizes the fellow's quality of life and provides a comprehensive education.
Our patient population is as diverse as our landscape, given the breadth of both chronic illness and malignancies seen by our service. Patients come from diverse backgrounds, as do our faculty. I am very proud to include disciplines such as pharmacy and chaplaincy in addition to many medical specialties. Our faculty have trained at numerous institutions and bring their outside knowledge to our department, enriching our educational programming. Our goal is to provide fellows with an education to be successful in community practice.
As a native of the Scranton region, I have been honored to build this program to continue increasing access to critical services, such as palliative care, for the community that raised me. We hope you’ll join us in building those bridges within our community to provide comprehensive, patient-centered care.
Lauren Elizabeth Nicholls, MD, FAAFP
Program overview
You’ll complete core rotations and have weekly didactic sessions ranging from symptom management to spiritual care. The didactic schedule mirrors rotation schedule so that you are learning about the conditions you are seeing.
Core rotations include:
• Inpatient palliative medicine consult service• Home and inpatient hospice
• Long-term care
• Ambulatory palliative clinic
• Multidisciplinary ALS clinic
• Advanced lung failure
• Complex pediatrics
• Medical oncology
• Radiation oncology
• Research
• Electives
• Interventional pain
• Addiction medicine
• Chaplaincy
• Pediatric palliative care
• Ethics
• Advanced heart failure
• Geriatrics
• Medical knowledge
• Practice-based learning and improvement
• Interpersonal and communication skills
• Professionalism
• Systems-based practice
All fellows will also complete a scholarly project related to research, performance improvement or quality improvement. You’ll present your findings in Grand Rounds at the end of the year. Publication is encouraged but not required.