GME Hospice & Palliative Medicine Fellowship

The Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Program at Mercy Hospital is dedicated to training physicians to provide both compassionate care and exceptional clinical service. We train our fellows in a team approach that focuses on managing pain and other distressing symptoms associated with serious illness with the goal to ease suffering and to enable the best possible quality of life for our patients and their families.

The Mercy Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship program trains two post-residency physicians per year and the fellowship is one year in length. Clinical rotations include inpatient consult service, outpatient palliative care clinic, long term care facilities, pediatric palliative care and home or facility based hospice care.  Elective rotations include oncology, pulmonary critical care, ethics, radiation oncology, cardiology, neurology, geriatrics, research, and quality improvement and geriatrics.

Mercy Hospital is the second largest hospital in St Louis with 979 licensed beds. We serve a diverse population in terms of race, culture, socio-economic status and geographic location. We have a robust and well integrated Palliative Care service at Mercy that was founded in March of 2004 and which serves as the backbone of our fellowship training program. Our program has been Joint Commission Certified since 2013. Our HPM fellowship has a strong emphasis on clinical practice,  including individualized mentoring by  our core faculty of board certified hospice and palliative medicine physicians, as well as the opportunity to work with our experienced palliative care trained nurse practitioners, social workers, chaplains and other interdisciplinary team members.  Further training in core knowledge and skills will be provided through didactic lectures, small group sessions, palliative care journal club, case presentations and structured reflection. Fellows will have the opportunity to develop their clinical teaching skills while working closely with Critical Care fellows, Internal Medicine, Family Medicine and Transitional Year residents, nursing students and nurse practitioner students.  Fellows will be introduced to research and quality improvement methods and a patient safety and quality improvement project will be required.

Program Leadership and Faculty