Looking Back on 10 Years of Palliative Medicine

by Drew RosielleJuly 1, 2006 was the day I became a staff palliative care physician at the Medical College of Wisconsin, after having completed my fellowship there. So it's been 10 years I've been doing this, and I've been reflecting a little on what's changed in those years. So here are my thoughts. I don't want to pretend all of these are profound, most of them have been said by others before, and better, but things have changed in these 10 years - I've changed - and I decided to write a little about it. Much of this is just my own perceptions of things, a lot of them are my own misconceptions probably, and I don't want to pretend to be speaking for the field, or anyone else but me. I should note that my clinical work is ambulatory palliative care, and inpatient consultation, not hospice work, which undoubtedly influences some of these perspectives. Clearly, the burning platform in contemporary healthcare that created the need for palliative care, still exists, and probably is even more burning than before. Patients with advanced illness are all too often lost, poorly informed as to what's going on/what's realistic, overwhelmed, suffering in all dimensions; families too. When we're involved, I think we help mitigate this somewhat, but the need remains huge, and is getting huger. Yes, huger is a word.  Along those lines, I remember having this vague sense of professional vulnerability and territoriality 10 years ago. Worries we were going to do so well we were going to ...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: opioids palliative care physician rosielle The profession Source Type: blogs