Several weeks ago I noticed the new sign to the Palliative Care Service as you exit the basement elevator in Black Wing. I had often thought how hard it was to find the office and at a meeting I attended last year one staff got lost. So the sign jumped out at me and feels symbolic of the team's wider work to make palliative support more visible to doctors and patients. The hospital's new Interprofessional Practise video starts with a little girl kept alive on a ventilator with her family and several staff interacting; later on the video, a nurse cries as a doctor recounts her end of life at the team meeting. The service is advocating to the Ministry that palliative care be a mandatory rotation for medical students and not an elective. The Team for Research with Adolescents and Children in Palliation and Grief (Trac-PG.ca) is enrolling families, networking with other researchers and undertaking country wide research studies. Parents of children supported by the team have set up a program to support sibling grief, a research innovation fund and a new hospital wide award so the service can recognize staff interprofessional excellence.
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